Whipped
by Portamento
Summary: Santana Lopez is a spoiled rich woman with a lot of issues. She takes what's useful to her and keeps it moving. That is until she meets, Mistress Brittany Sheridan, a woman who gets her kicks out of wielding sexual power over others. She intends to teach Santana modesty, respect, and a myriad of other things, but in the end the two end up learning a lot from one another.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello everyone. I'd been planning this fic for quite some time before the break-up ep, and kind of lost some motivation after my babies broke up. I thought I'd post it, see what you guys think, in the hopes that it would spur me on to the point that it didn't matter if brittana are canon anymore : ( Hopefully they'll be canon again someday. They better be lol! Btw, this is not G!p. I dislike G!p with a passion :/  
**

**Well, I hope you guys get some enjoyment out of this.  
**

Ever seen the TV show _Dallas_? Well if you have, the way that those characters live? - that's my life. I half wish I could say that my life isn't nearly as chock full of drama, but, in the end it always is. Whether it be a seemingly genuine smile from someone close who secretly wants something from you, or a doting father that has a secret side family; you can't trust anything. That's why I live the way that I do. I lavish in all of it, taking whatever I can get, even if it means taking from others, even if it means seeing families homeless, children out on the street shivering from hunger and the winter's bite. This world, my world, it's a hotbed of betrayal, sibling rivalry, power struggles, money, and most of all oil; the best thing ever to happen to my parents in the late eighties!

I'm Santana Lopez by the way, not that you didn't already know it. You should have. I mean, when people think oil, doesn't the Lopez name automatically spring to mind? It should. However, I'd get it if you knew of me via the magazines and the newspapers too. My affinity for sexscapades with various women has been front page more times than I care to acknowledge, my not so personal life available for morning reading over bacon and eggs before people go to work, but hey, I'm only twenty-four right? If your father was Miguel C Lopez, you'd feel like you could do whatever the fuck you wanted and have enough money to make the mess ups go away too.

But this, tonight, wasn't going to be one of them. I was going to flick my finger at the domino, and it was going to successfully collapse into the one behind it, setting off a trail of falling dominos with a pot of gold at the end of it, for the collection of the Lopez family.

So, I put on an amused giggle and slipped two fingers around the stem of my champagne glass, lifting it from the cream table cloth. The golden fizz filling it sloshed back and forth as I tilted it towards Quinn in toast.

"To a long meaningful friendship," she smirked, holding her glass out to mine.

For a change, I was going to do daddy proud.

"To a long and meaningful friendship," I repeated, finalizing it with a small clink of our glasses.

To be honest, Quinn Fabray wasn't anything but a fake sanctimonious bore in my opinion, not that she would ever know that from the smiles and compliments I've been forcing her way all night. She's that bat her eyelashes innocently at you across the table, whilst running the toe of her heels up and down your calf type, not that she's been doing that to me. No, to do that would be in violation of her moral code, which seems to consist of an endless scroll of things that Jesus would disapprove of. She has these really coy eyes too, and she's been taking the most delicate bites of food from her plate all evening, but she's not fooling me.

I know a wolf in sheep's clothing when I see one. I am one; they don't call me Satan for nothing.

"So uhm," Quinn hummed around another bite of chicken, "you have someone special in your life, Santana?"

Like she was genuinely interested. She'd probably flickered through a copy of _People_! Magazine before coming here tonight, and probably thought she knew everything about me.

"Hmm," I slurped, quickly sucking in a long string of spaghetti. Shortly after, I reached for my napkin to dab the splashes of sauce that had splattered at the corner of my mouth.

Quinn only chuckled, but still her eyes were wide, encouraging an answer out of me.

"I'm not really a relationship kind of girl," I finally said with a swallow of food, briefly raising my eyebrows and widening my eyes at her in a silent acknowledgement and complaint of just how pesky spaghetti could be.

She chuckled again and closed her eyes with a nod, before opening them. "So how come you're not a relationship kind of girl?"

I shrugged. "People get on my nerves?"

Quinn forked another bite in past her lips, her entire face alight with mirth as she chewed and tried not to choke on the laughter bubbling in the back of her throat. "Finally, there's the person I've read about," she teased, chuckling softly. "But seriously, you're actually really cool, nothing like how the media portrays you."

"Well," I said, sighing out a large breath of mock relief, "I'm glad I get your seal of approval."

"Don't be so sensitive; I didn't mean it like that," Quinn placated, though glints of playfulness remained shaping the mirth in her eye.

Continuing to fork trips of pasta and mince into my mouth, I shrugged; it didn't matter anyway. She was just a means to an end, and I wasn't going to fuck this up, so I swallowed down the demon on my tongue, and smiled across at the blonde, letting her know that it was ok for her to relax back into that beautiful ivory skin of hers.

"They make you out to be some sex crazy succubus, but you're really respectful and gentlewomanly. Opening the door for me when we walked in, and pulling my chair out? - I wasn't expecting that, so thanks because I was _actually_," she squeaked, momentarily lowering her gaze as her cheeks blazed pink, "a tad nervous about coming to dinner tonight."

I am sex crazed. Women are beautiful, and I have a real tough time keeping my hands to myself when I spot one that takes my fancy, hence those articles about me turning the likes of Taylor Swift, Emily Blunt, and Jenifer Carpenter out. I loved sex with women, everything about it, the oxymoron of soft but aggressive, the sight of pink flustered nipples, the smell, the taste, the wet-and-stickiness. If I don't get to touch a woman that I've taken an interest in, I've been known to sulk for up to two months. But that doesn't happen very often.

"Santana?"

When my mind cleared of me slurping on some faceless woman's pert nipple, Quinn's confused face re-appeared before me. "Where'd you go?" she asked, reaching for her glass.

I smiled cheerily. "No place special. About you being nervous; there was no need, but I get it. The media's a terrible thing."

"Yeah..." she solemnly trailed off into her head, which I could tell was quickly filling with memories of her father's recently dropped rape case.

I wasn't about to bring it up. One: I needed her to like me if this thing was going to sail smoothly. Two: I wasn't here to dredge up her past, especially one that I wasn't supposed to know about. But I always do my research. Always.

I let Quinn chew on her turbulent memories in silence as I glanced around the restaurant for any faces that I might know. I wasn't surprised when I spotted Mr. Emoto, an aging Japanese man that my father had made extensive business deals with over the past two years. He quickly felt the weight of my stare and winked whilst flashing me that 'charming' smile. His wife was sat across the table from him, with eyes less friendly as she regarded me, though she needn't worry herself about someone as young and attractive as me trying to take her husband from her; I was more interested in what colour _her_ lingerie was, to be blunt.

Mr. Emoto swatted her hand, which was coiled on the surface of the table, and motioned towards me, prompting his wife into forcing a quick tight smile my way. He then winked at me again.

_Fucking creep_, I thought, smiling back toothily as I gave him a small wave.

To the chorus of Quinn's silverware clinking against her plate, I let my eyes skate towards the bar area, where quite the tall blonde woman was perched on a bar stool, which was shaped like an elegant snake. She was taking a bottle of Budweiser to and from her lips, swigging long and smooth gulps. Her full head of blonde hair was a little frantic as it sat in a quickly thrown together bun, and her true body type remained a secret to me; swallowed by a gigantic grey hoody with sweatpants, just as roomy, to match. There was also a long duffel bag hung high up on her shoulder, prompting me to surmise that this was merely a winding down drink after a workout at the gym. Where ever she'd been, she stuck out against the Prada pinstriped tailored suits, and the Gucci dresses in this place like a diamond's glint.

Something inside of me piqued, something that felt a lot like interest.

Brow furrowed like a determined detective, I eyed this mystery of a woman and asked Quinn, "hey, do you know that lady over there?" I subtly nodded in the beer swigging blonde's direction, and Quinn, looking relieved to see the end of our silence, eagerly span in her seat, her eyes finding the woman at the bar with a concentrative squint.

It was common for one member of the elite to know of another, even if they'd never exchanged words or a business deal. I sat hoping that Quinn knew of the blonde, because I've been in this life one hell of a long time and I'd never come across the woman who'd been so bold as to wear sweats in an upscale establishment such as this. All I needed was a family name, and I'd be able to flash a few notes at Ben and have a little research done.

With a shy smile, Quinn returned her gaze to me. Her cheeks were flustered, blotching down the porcelain flesh of her neck.

"What?" I asked.

"You, err, you really don't know who that is?" Quinn whispered across at me.

I merely shrugged. "People know who I am, not the other way around."

She took her pale jittery hand to her neck, drawing her palm down it in what appeared to be a coping mechanism for stress, before reaching for her glass of champagne and gulping down what was left of the golden fizz.

What was she so nervous about?

"Who is she?" I pressed, growing impatient.

"Mistress Sheridan," Quinn whispered, as if the title bared ominous weight behind it. "Mistress Brittany Sheridan."

"Mistress?"

Quinn merely nodded, placing her empty glass back to the table with a gulp and slight wince.

A smirk gradually carved its place out in my expression; I felt it in every cell of my body. "She's exquisite on the eyes," I said, still eying this Brittany woman.

Quinn suddenly broke. "Look, if this is you trying to mess with me Santana, then I don't think I want to continue with this friendship."

I frowned down to my toes. "What?"

She studied my face for a moment. Then her pursed lips parted, accommodating a large breath out of them which deflated her tense shoulders. "Nothing."

"What else do you know about Miss Brittany?" I asked, eager for more information.

"Why?" Quinn exasperated, dropping her silverware to the table with a pointed clunk.

I took a moment to eye her just as she had me seconds earlier, and a story began to tell itself to me. A story where Quinn was a secret client of Brittany's, and perfect, boring, sanctimonious Quinn was afraid that I knew about their dealings. Still, I've been told that I have an over active imagination.

"Maybe I want to book an appointment with her," I smirked.

Quinn's face crumpled in disapproval, and she began to scurry to collect her bag. "I don't agree with people who use services such as that," she told me, standing up. "It's immoral, the type of thing that breaks up families."

Shit! Things were not supposed to go this way. She needed to sit her ass down and eat the rest of this boring meal with me, so that her father would consider us Lopez' friends, and sign his business over to my father, without hiccup, when propositioned.

"I was kidding," I quickly back peddled, flashing a toothy grin. "Sit down."

"I don't think that you were," Quinn bristled.

I sighed, bored with being nice at this point.

"Take care of yourself Santana." With that, Quinn absconded the establishment as quickly as her heels would take her, and I began to drum my fingers to the table as I stalked Mistress Brittany's back...

"Good evening," I smirked, taking up a seat on the bar stool beside the one that Mistress Brittany was perched upon.

"Evening." She nodded, once, though never actually looking at me. Her eyes, which were a sparkling complexion of blues, were far too engaged in riding the curves of the burlesque dancers up on stage.

I _really_ wasn't used to being ignored.

"So, what have I got to do to get you to look at me, huh?"

The Mistress suddenly sighed and slid her bottle of Budweiser away from her, finally looking at me, although from the corner of her patterned blue eye. "What do you want, exactly?"

At the unexpected impudence, my eyebrow lifted all on its own. "Are you always this rude when people try to make conversation with you?"

A smirk slowly grew into her features as she regarded me full-on. I felt heated under the intensity in her complete gaze. It was unusual, to say the least. "Thank you, but I'm not interested," she said, grabbing her bottle of beer again, and taking it to her lips.

My left eyebrow shot up to join the other, and my head violently nodded itself back in offence. "Excuse you? I didn't offer you anything, Miss _Brittany_."

She stared at me, from crown to soles, and I expected, from her, some kind of reaction to the fact that I knew who she was, but she simply turned her attention back to the women on stage. "You offered conversation which, once again, I'm not interested in."

I slammed my palm to the bar's surface, looking for a flinch or some type of reaction from her, with no success. "If I wasn't so caught up in wanting to ride your fingers right now, I'd probably throw the rest of this Budweiser in your jerk of a face. How about that?"

"How about," she responded, calm as the clouds floating in the sky, "you go and bother someone else?" She made her lithe pale fingers walk through the air, illustrating the suggested course of action that I should take, like I was deaf, dumb, and inept. "I'll never fuck you. That's not what I do," she enunciated, to the point that her lips were still ringed around the last word she'd spoken moments after she'd spoken it.

For a moment, I faltered, not knowing how to deal with the concept of being told no. No wasn't something that people like me should ever have to hear. Dad had taught me that from young, and I believed it like it was a crucifix that hung around my neck. So I reached into my purse for the roll of fifties that mom had given me yesterday. I held it up in the serene purple light floating over the bar, then tossed it at Miss Brittany like she was nothing.

She wanted to make me feel like nothing? Well two could play that game. She was a fucking dominatrix for fuck sake; who the hell did she think she was?

Miss Brittany bowed her head to look down at the thick roll of notes that had pelted her lap, whilst I demanded, "I'd likes to book a session." I tapped the bar top as if to light a fire under her ass. "Now!"

Something smug floated over her unique features and she slowly shook her head from side to side. "Bold."

"Bold?" I was growing impatient. When I asked something of another, I expected to hear, 'how high?'

"Yes," she said, collecting the money and stuffing it down into the cleavage of my tight black dress with as much sass as I'd employed whilst tossing it at her. "Very bold of you to treat someone you're willing to sub for with such little regard. You have no idea what you're in for, do you princess?"

I touched my twenty-five-thousand dollar pearl choker absently, then dropped my hand back to the bar. "How about you stop talking and just make the damn appointment, before I lose my temper?"

"Impatient too." She slid her pale hand into her sweatpants pocket and pushed her contact card across the bar towards me. "Email me in two weeks, not a day before or after. If you fail to do so, I won't respond, nor will I ever acknowledge you if I see you out in public. If you try to contact or approach me, I'll seek out a restraining order. Do I make myself clear?"

"Erm -"

"Let's see how good you are at doing as you're told," she cut me off, side-eying me.

I blinked down at the card on the bar, and then shrugged, just relieved to be one step closer to seeing this broad naked. "What do you propose I put in this email?"

"Anything you want."

I sighed loudly. "This doesn't seem like an appointment."

"Email me in two weeks, and we'll arrange a session after that..." She reached for her beer and took a swig from the bottle, still side-eying me, like I was a naughty child that needed to be watched. "If I see fit, of course."

"Whatever," I said, tossing my thick curtain of velvet black hair off of my shoulder. "What are your prices like?"

Miss Brittany took her gaze back to the dancers seductively sashaying around in smoke and dimmed lights. "If you do as you're told, it'll be no charge."

I instantly became suspicious. "Everybody has their price."

"Oh, you'll pay. Don't worry about that," she said, smirking to herself around another swig.

She was so fucking fine that I almost didn't know what to do with myself. The little dimple in her smirking cheek, the straightness of her perfect white teeth as her top lip rode up to accommodate her grin, those complex blue eyes - even her aloofness; which was both a curse and a tease to me. If I'd not been in fear of more rejection, I would've taken her hand and lured her to the back seat of the limo that I had waiting for me just outside the back of this place.

But fuck if I was going to tell her any of that. She probably knew it all anyway, the bitch. "Look, you're not intimidating in the least. In fact, you look like you babysit kids, the typical girl next door, 'cept a little hotter. So drop the bullshit."

"Santana Lopez loses her cool," Miss Brittany mocked, as though reading a headline from a magazine. "How predictable."

"How the fuck do you know my name?" It was out of my mouth before I could confirm just how redundant the question was with myself. Everybody knew my name. Usually, I revelled in that fact, in the fame, especially when folks would throw free stuff my way because of my notoriety, but not now.

Miss Brittany boredly dragged her eyes through the air to settle on me. "I know who you are, Santana."

"...right." I nodded, and hugged my mid-section, suddenly feeling more than a little exposed.

Easing off of the bar stool, she hiked her bag further up on her shoulder, and I was able to get a reading on how deliciously tall she was. "Night Miss Lopez."

She left me stood there feeling weightless and more insecure than I'd felt in years. "Two can play this game," I muttered under my breath.

**So there we have it. First chapter posted! I hope you liked it, and if you did let me know please : )**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks to everyone who reviewed. It was nice to hear your thoughts, as well as motivating. Also, to the reviewer who mentioned G!p, this fic certainly will not be a G!p. I don't get the g!p fascination. I've tried and it just doesn't work for me. But even without g!p, I hope you can still appreciate this tale **

**: ) To the other anon reviewer, Brittany's name thing will make itself more clear with coming chapters ; )  
**

**On with the show then!**

I loitered by the sleek silver convertible, arms folded, with my foot turned out to the side as I beat it to the concrete. My growing impatience brought the toe of my shoe down heavier with each tap. "Where the fuck are you?" I hissed down at the diamond-encrusted watch hanging from my caramel wrist.

"Ah, Santana," Ben's voice sounded, deep and business-like. He quickly emerged from beyond the tall black and gold cathedral-like gates, which looked as though they'd been built for that of giants, and he power-walked towards the scowling young woman waiting by his car, me. "Sorry about the wait, Santana. I had some things," he sighed, gesturing a bored thumb over his shoulder at the modern castle with which he lived in, "to take care of. One of my maids got a bit lippy. Anyway, how can I be of service?"

I unfolded my arms, but continued to tap my foot to the ground. "Ummhmm, you think I have nothing better to do but wait out here for you? Here!" I stuffed the crumpled piece of paper into the breast pocket of Ben's pinstriped blazer, causing the stocky man to step back a little under the impact. "Her name's Mistress Brittany Sheridan, but goes by the name Madame Sheridan, or Mistress Sheridan I'm presuming. Anything and everything you can find on her would be helpful."

"Mistress?" Ben questioned, an eyebrow lifting with his upward tone. He then chuckled and shook his head from side to side at the supposed scandal of it. "Never thought I'd see the day that Santana Paris 'Turn 'em out' Lopez would venture to start paying for sex."

I rolled bored eyes off to the side, and slipped my arms across my chest once more. "I'm not paying for sex, because that would be illegal, Einstein," was all I sighed out. "She's just real closed off, and if people don't open up to me, I pay you to pry them open. This is no different from any of the other times I've used my parent's money to have someone checked out, so just do what I pay you for and quit with the damn inquiry."

"Alright." Ben nodded, tapped his blazer breast pocket and pulled open his car door, sinking down into the driver's seat but a moment later. With a mechanical whooshing noise, the window then descended. "I'll have something for you ASAP. Have a good day."

With that, Ben enclosed himself within his convertible, rumbled up the engine to a smooth purr, and rounded the driveway which snaked out into the road.

I stood there smirking off into smug thoughts. "Let's see how you deal with not being in control, Brittany."

I arrived at my parent's mansion some twenty minutes later, and was greeted with the sight of my father sat at the bar, kitted out in his golf attire whilst he ran his finger repeatedly around the rim of his whiskey glass. "How did it go with the Fabray girl?" he asked, before I even had chance to close the front door.

I pushed the door in and closed my eyes, sighing and reopening them before turning around to look at him under my eyelids, cautious. "Not good."

He wrapped his large hand around his tiny glass and threw the strong brown liquid down his throat without as much as a wince. "How bad was it, on a scale of one to ten?" he probed, rotating the empty glass round on the bar top.

I looked down to my feet, hiding a wince of my own behind my hanging curtain of hair. "A five, maybe?"

I then looked up into the steel that was my father's cold brown eyes. They were the eyes of a business man, a ruthless business man, and they'd flickered that way ever since I could remember.

He wasn't blinking, and neither was I.

"You couldn't get this one simple thing right. It was easy, just make friends with her, and you screwed that up."

"She's a boring uptight princess!" I erupted, slinging my hand out with my words to punctuate my fury. "Way too easily offended. I was nice to her, _all_ evening," I argued. "Do you have any idea how difficult that was?" He wasn't going to make me feel small over this bullshit. So I failed, once again. The asshole should've been used to it by now. Everybody else in this family was, including me.

He continued to pin me with his glare for a few more seconds, before waving his hand through the air like he was dismissing me or something. "I should've gotten your sister to handle it instead. You know nothing about networking or business. Always too busy thinking about bedding the next woman, right?"

"_Half_ sister! Rachel is my _half_ sister," I pushed through gritted teeth. "And bullshit, 'cause you're no different than I am, except you're married to mom, which makes your skirt-chasing a whole lot worse." I stopped for a moment, reining in my temper so that I could slip into my sweet-little-girl-who's-about-to-start-fucking-with-your-mind persona. "It'd be _so_ sad if she found out that when you say you're going golfing, you're actually balls deep in a completely different type of hole than the ones on a golf course, wouldn't it?"

He smirked, something sinister behind it. "She'd never find out about that though, right Santana?" It sounded like a question but it wasn't, and we both knew that.

I shrugged a casual shoulder, just to irritate him. "Never know who might make like a bird and sing. They say I've a pretty good voice. You've even said so yourself, right pap?"

I watched my father chuckle down into his lap and then ditch his seat at the bar. His face straightened with every step he took towards me, until I was staring up into his most stoic expression. I didn't realize that he was holding a golf ball until he lifted it up to my cheek, tapping my skin in suggestive threat with the cold white object.

"You have a wonderful voice, just like a bird. Be a shame if anything happened to it. It's always a sad thing to see an injured bird."

With that said, he smiled, nudged my nose with the bent knuckle of his index finger, and stepped past me, the front door opening and slamming seconds later.

My fists balled by my sides, so hard that my entire frame trembled momentarily, and when I unclenched them I felt weak. There you have it ladies and gentleman; my Papi, Miguel Lopez.

It was unwise to threaten him, to be on any side other than his, but I couldn't help it. He pushed my buttons so hard that most were jammed by now, making me erratic and prone to anger at the slightest changes in the wind. Yes, my father was an asshole, but he'd given me everything that I had, and it was a tiring mental exercise to have to keep reminding myself not to bite the hand that feeds me.

One day I was going to be free of him though, free of him, free of my constantly intoxicated mom, free of Rachel.

Definitely free of Rachel.

"You think it's healthy, this tension that you two constantly keep between you?"

I looked up to the scene of Rachel - speak of the devil - sweeping into the bar area, her body enveloped in a plush pink velvet robe which trailed the marble floors behind her. She grabbed a glass, and the same bottle of whiskey that I suspected still had dad's prints on it.

"He's not your father, _Berry_, so kindly mind your own business." I signed that with a cloying smile, which held more hostility in it than a fist to the gut.

Rachel clicked her tongue and poured a small amount of whiskey into her glass, all the while shaking her head at me. "You've much to learn little sis," she sighed, like I was this great big burden to her, like it was her job to show me the way.

All finished pouring, she took a sip - one that seemed to reset our conversation - from her glass. "Mom's upstairs emptying the contents of her stomach in the toilet, which leads me to the conclusion that she's pregnant again, merely because it's been going on for the last five days. Your take?"

"Perhaps her liver can't take the alcohol abuse anymore. Thought of that?"

"Santana," she scolded, rolling her eyes like my statement was implausible or something, which it totally wasn't.

I folded my arms and stood firm to the black swirls patterning the white marble floor. "What? The woman drinks non-stop. The day before yesterday, she was so out of it that she handed me a thick roll of fifties when I asked her for two hundred. Quite frankly, I'm surprised she still has a stomach."

"That's our mother you're talking about, Santana! And quite frankly..." Rachel paused as if considering whether to say what was on her mind or not, and then finally just shrugged, spitting it out. "She never drank this much before she found out about your lewd nightly activities with other women."

Oh, so she wanted to take it there, did she? I had just the thing for her uptight ass.

"It's not just nightly, Rachel. I'll fuck at any time of the day, just so long as the pussy is juicy enough." I smiled at her, waiting for her stomach to curdle at my 'crass' words.

Sure enough, her face contorted like she was in physical pain, and she pushed her glass of whiskey away from her, disgusted by the idea of putting anything near her mouth whilst the mental image of me with another woman roamed her thoughts.

I hadn't been this amused in days.

"Ugh, why must you insist on spewing such deplorable obscenities in my presence? This is why I'm taking over the business if and when mom and Miguel are ever not able to. You have absolutely zero tact or people skills. It's quite angering, but then again, you love to upset those closest to you, don't you?"

"Fuck you, fuck mom, and fuck dad if you guys can't except that I'm gay. I love women, I love to bury my head between -"

Rachel threw a stern hand up to prevent me going any further. "We have no problem with you being a homosexual, you crude individual. My best friend is a homosexual in case your eyes jest you. We have a problem with the fashion in which you flaunt it to the world, in this ever-growing seedy and unsavoury manner. It just isn't warranted." She paused to take a much needed breather, brow furrowed as she huffed and puffed. "If you'd just pick one woman and try to love her and make it work, nobody would have even the slightest problem, I can assure you. But you insist on conveying your lesbianism as this never-ending myriad of sexual trysts. It brings you down and the quality of the Lopez name."

"Which, by the way, you're not a part of," I kindly reminded her, all nice and wrapped up with one of my sickly sweet smiles and nose wrinkles.

Rachel threw both of her hands up, declaring, "there's just no getting through; you're insufferable!" In a hurry to get away from me, she breezed out of the room, even leaving her drink behind.

"I'm me. Get the fuck used to it!" I shouted after her, as she stomped up each step of the spiralling staircase. When her angry feet were out of earshot, I mumbled, "I have to get the fuck away from these people before I lose my fucking mind," to myself…

The moment I got to my condo, I grabbed my laptop, a cup of coffee, and sank down into my sofa.

I spent the next hour or so sipping dark Egyptian roast from a mug and typing bondage terminology into Google's search engine.

I'd grown uncomfortably wet running my eyes over one term's definition to another, unable to shake the vivid imagery of Mistress Brittany stood tall and stern over me in nothing but a black corset, heels and suspenders, as she did unspeakable things to my body. My mouth was watery at the mere thought of going down on her and having my jaw ache because she was having me work my tongue so hard. The cotton of my sticky panties felt almost painful against my overly sensitive clitoris, and peering down, I noticed each of my nipples protruding out so that my green shirt looked as though there were two notice board pins underneath it.

"Fuck, you really need to calm down," I told myself.

In that moment the phone rang. With a sigh, I grabbed it from the table and pressed the pick-up button, clearing the husk from my throat. "Hello?"

"Finn's totalled his car. We're all at Saint Jutenberg's hospital," Rachel panicked on the other end, and by the temperament of her voice, the image of her stood out in the hospital parking lot flailing entered my mind.

I snapped the laptop's lid shut and tried to give the normal human response. After all, Finn had never done anything to me, besides encompass every reason as to why I wasn't attracted to guys. "Is he alright?"

"...they, umm, they said that he will be," Rachel responded after a few moments of breathy silence. She sniffed back what I can only assume were tears, her voice quiet and tenuous when it returned. "Are you coming down too? The more positive energy we can send him, the better. I'll send Larry to come and pick you up."

"Wait just a minute." I scooted to the edge of the sofa. "Are mom and Miguel there?"

"Yes."

I nodded in solemn understanding. "Well then I'm staying right where I am. I don't want to get into a fight with the both of them today. I'm only twenty-four; too young for high blood pressure."

"So you're not coming?"

"You have mom and Miguel down there with you. It's not like Finn's dying, Rachel, and it's not like you and I are anything close to pillars of support for one another. Call that fudge-packer, Kurt; I'm sure he'd be down there for you in a shot."

And I wasn't wrong. Kurt would be down there in a shot if she called on him, but it wasn't because he couldn't bear the thought of Rachel going through such distress without him to soothe her through it, but more because Kurt himself had a thing for Finn's doughy, lumberjack-looking ass - not that Rachel's noticed. Finn's noticed though, hence why he constantly talks about all the sex he's had with women, jabbers on about football, and mentions how much he likes to chug pitches of beer with his bros whenever Kurt's around, like that affirms his manliness or extends his capacity for heterosexuality or something. Funny thing is, I think those things turn Kurt on all the more. Really, the exchange is a wonder to watch.

"Thanks a lot," Rachel spat down the phone, meaning anything but. "You never cease to amaze me with your ability to constantly sink to new depths of insensitivity."

The phone was dead within seconds...

I stared at it for a moment, then placed it back on the table, slowly lifting the laptop's lid back up. The urge to email Miss Brittany now, thirteen days before our agreed two weeks, was strong. Not just because I couldn't stop thinking about how her hands would feel on my skin, but because she'd given me that ultimatum. I wanted to test it, wanted to see if she'd really seek out a restraining order against me if I broke her weird little rule.

"Thirteen more days," I sighed, switching the laptop off and throwing on my jacket to head on down to Saint Jutenberg's. The press already had me pegged somewhat as the black sheep of the Lopez family. I couldn't miss this opportunity for the paparazzi to snap a shot of us all together, being this caring cohesive unit, in support of both Finn and Rachel, even if it meant smiling at my parents in front of the camera and ignoring their existence the rest of the time. It never hurts to work on your public image, right? Maybe I could expand the type of job offers that I often received if the world saw a side to me that wasn't always knee deep in tits and pussy.

* * *

Sender: Snixed-mailer. net

Recipient: YOURBRITTANYSBITCH-pro-dom. org

Subject: About that appointment...

Attachments: IMG2369. jpg, IMG6548. jpg

Body:

_Two weeks are up. Get back to me. And enjoy the pics I attached. I know you will ;)_

_Santana._

I clicked the send option and blew out a breath that slumped my shoulders a little. I was about to shut the laptop down when a new email appeared in my inbox.

A smirk bunched my cheek as I clicked it.

Sender: YOURBRITTANYSBITCH-pro-dom. org

Recipient: Snixed-mailer. net

Subject: About that appointment...

Body:

_I'm somewhat impressed by your restraint. You're now allowed to phone me. Call the number on the contact card I gave you, and call me from your cell phone. You've got five minutes, otherwise don't bother._

Three minutes. That's how long I sat staring at my phone before tapping in the number from Miss Brittany's card. I could play these games too...

Down to the remaining forty seconds, I finally thumbed the call button and put the phone to my ear, listening to it ring until it wasn't anymore.

"...hello?" I impatiently asked the stretching silence on the other end.

"There's a small cafe in central town called Eden. I'm there now. Get here within the next twenty-five minutes. However, if I've finished my sandwich and coffee before then, and you still aren't here, I will have already left. Have I made myself clear, Santana?"

I threw my wrist out, looked at the diamond encrusted face of my watch, and sighed extensively into the phone. "Look, Brittany, anybody ever tell you you're hot? Well, I think that you're unjustly hot, and I know that dominating your little submissives is your job or whatever but, honestly? I just want some fun, maybe handcuff me, spank me a little bit." I leant my head to the side in thought. "Maybe even drop hot candle wax on my skin, whilst I get myself off either in front of you or whilst sat on your lap. That too much to ask?"

"Yeah it is," her unimpressed voice filled my ear. It was pure sex in the form of a voice, Brittany's voice, and I closed my eyes at the sound. "You haven't earned any of that. You're impatient, ill-disciplined, spoiled, and you think you can just throw money at things and that means you own them. I can't stand any of those qualities, especially that last one. So you're going to be different when you're with me. Is that understood?"

Just like that, everything went sour, and my eyes snapped open, teeth caging. "You know _nothing_ about me, except what the media puts out. You can go fuck yourself if you think I'm coming to meet you now."

Just like that the phone went dead on me...

"What an absolute butt monkey!" I grunted down at my phone, whilst fumbling to get my contacts up on the screen. When I got to Ben's number, I selected the option to call him, and then promptly slung my phone back to my ear, listening to it ring out…

"Come on, pick up, pick up, pick up."

"Hello, Ben Fullham speaking."

"Did you manage to find anything on Mistress Brittany yet?" I all but barked.

"Oh, hey Santana, and no. Nothing. It's like she doesn't exist. No social security, no criminal record, no driver's license, no dental records, no diplomas. Nothing."

I remained silent, pondering that for a moment. Whenever I'd done research on someone before and nothing came up, it always meant that the name I'd been researching was a false one, an alias. "Shit," I muttered. "I think she's operating under an alias, Ben. I'll get back to you with a real name as soon as I can."

"Alright. Good luck," he wished me with an amused chuckle.

Slipping my phone into my sweatpants pocket, I glanced at the clock hung up on the wall. I still had twenty minutes to meet Mistress Brittany's - or whatever the hell her real name was - deadline. I was going to get a real identity.

Fifteen minutes later, I found myself in dark round shades as I pulled open Eden's café doors and peered around the establishment for blonde hair and complex blue eyes. The place was pretty empty for this time, save one or two couples sat throughout.

Then I saw her, sat in the corner by the counter, eating her sandwich whilst she fiddled with her cell phone, oblivious to me. I spent the next few moments just staring at her. I needed to. I needed to look at her and not have it be dictated by her. She wasn't in sweats today - far from it. She was in regular clothes, a V-neck, long-sleeved green shirt, and black skinny jeans that sucked tight around her shins, shins which were crossed beneath the table that she was sat at. Smart black heels adorned her feet, and her hair was braided back with only her bangs free to frolic in the wind.

She was stunning, and I despised her for it.

I brisk-walked over towards her, and noisily slid into the seat opposite. She looked up and stared into my big round shades, jaw working around the food in her mouth. I simply stared back, silent. The more I stared, the harder it was to believe that she was this hardened dominatrix. Away from the seductive lighting of the bar, she looked even more so like a harmless babysitter, someone that you'd ask to watch your house whilst you kicked the sands of some exotic beach abroad.

I couldn't work her out, and it was bugging the shit out of me. "What do you want from me exactly?" I grunted low, leaning in towards her so that no one would hear.

Nothing new flickered in her eyes as she took another bite of her sandwich and then leaned back slightly to slip her cell phone into her jeans pocket. "You're the one that approached me."

"And you wouldn't take my money, so I don't understand what you want. What do you want?"

She chuckled, and the instant that it hit my ears, I felt mocked. "Well, it's definitely not your money," she replied, her voice pretty soft and jesting.

Fuck, she was cute. She had these freckles, very faint, peppered about the bridge of her nose. Even they seemed to frolic, mocking my urgency.

I ran my hands through my hair, stressed by the vacant look in her blue crystal pools. "Alright, fine," I finalized.

"Fine?" she asked squinting, and I cherished that upward inflection of her tone to an almost unhealthy extent, the sudden guardedness in her eyes. She was asking me something. For once, I was the knowing one, the one in control.

"I've decided to be the bigger person, and forgive you for what you said to me on the phone just now," I said, taking us down a new route. "It's easy to get swept up in everything that the media says. I get it."

"Who said I wanted your forgiveness?" she instantly retorted, brow cocked feistily.

I leaned forward just that little bit more into her space and enunciated, "me, that's who." I then let up on the intensity and smirked. "I know it's important to you that I like you, so... I guess you're forgiven."

"Wow," she chuckled, like my comment was completely absurd and the only response that it was worthy of was laughter.

"Wow was totally your response when you peeped those pics I sent you, and we both know it."

"Those pics." She shook her head slowly and repeatedly clicked her tongue. "I have to say, I'm not as forgiving as you."

What, she had a problem with the nudes that I'd sent her now?

"The hell are you talking about? You said I could put anything in the email." I paused to unruffle my feathers, settling back into a smirk. "And I know you liked those pictures. No one can look at those and not appreciate."

Her face remained unchanged for a moment, before it smiled. "You're right."

I flooded with pride. I worked hard on my body, and to get Miss Brittany's approval, no matter how lame I sound right now, made me feel good.

But that feeling was short lived when she deadpanned. "Get up, and go wait for me in the middle stall." She calmly nodded her head over in the direction of the ladies room, an easy expectance about her.

"Excuse me?"

She took another bite out of her dwindling sandwich and peered out of the café's window, watching as members of the public bustled by. "Do as you're told, Santana. If I have to tell you again, those pictures you sent me go global." She chewed on her food like what was happening was an everyday thing.

My first reaction was to shrug a shoulder, just to rip some control away from her. "I'll just have the major news corporations paid off. They won't publish those snaps. Money talks," I bragged, sliding my thumb back and forth the pads of my index and middle finger.

"You can't pay them all off," she told me with a grin, eyes a-sparkle; this was a game to her, what she did for fun. It was how she got her kicks, through the power.

I shrugged again, this time with much less confidence. "Well... at least my body looks good. If anything, it'll be a free advertisement to all those closet Hollywood starlets out there. They'll come running my way."

Miss Brittany nodded, though her expression gave nothing away. "You're gonna learn, and pretty quickly," she chuckled like she knew of things that I didn't, "not to stall when I tell you to do something."

"Really now?" I mocked.

"Sure," Miss Brittany nodded.

I couldn't tell whether she was being serious or not; she just had one of those faces that shut you out at will, and I was growing tired of this back and forth. Honestly, I just wanted to fuck her. Seriously, was that too much to freaking ask? I was even willing to give and not receive at this point.

I sighed, breaking the silence that had settled uncomfortably between us. Then I thought of Rachel and how she'd called me out on how I was with women. "Look, how about we drop the whole idea of booking a session and I take you out instead, for dinner or something?" I shrugged, though I didn't know why.

"I'm not hungry," she responded.

"I didn't mean right now. I meant -"

"I know what you meant."

"Then why did you -"

"Because I felt like fucking with you. Problem with that?" she challenged, her voice as even as the casual tide.

I sighed again. "Come on, I'll take you out, we'll get to know each other, and we'll see where it takes us. I came at you wrong the first time, I get it. What do you say?"

Miss Brittany raised her palm to cover her yawning mouth, before saying, "nope. You didn't earn a date with me. You think I'm just gonna drop my panties and let you go down on me because you spent a few hundred dollars on dinner and champagne? I don't see your money. It means nothing to me."

That was it! I was done putting myself out there!

I stood up in a fury, batting the plastic container that her sandwich had come packaged in from the table. "You know what? Forget you!" Turning my back on her, I began weaving through the various tables and chairs to get to the exit.

The moment I passed by the door to the ladies room, I felt a forceful hand on my back, then another on my one shoulder. Together, they steered me off course and pushed me through the ladies room door before I could say or do anything.

Once inside, the strong hands puppeting me relented, and I whipped around, a little out of breath, only to be met with complex blue hues. Surrounded by three sinks, a few pipes, three stalls, and Miss Brittany, my jaw fluttered from open to closed, to open again. I couldn't believe the strength of this woman... or the audacity.

Something hot and dangerous then began to sear through my limbs, my galloping heart the seeming source, and I walked up on Miss Brittany, teeth caged like this was Wrestlemania and I was about to slam her forehead against the turnbuckle. "Don't fuck with me, beca-"

Before I could finish threatening her, she'd clamped her palm over my mouth, pushing me backwards through the door to the middle stall. My back thudded the cubicle wall, the shades I'd worn easily tumbling from my face to the floor, and I clenched my eyes in wince, before opening them to exactly the same image that had been there when I'd screwed them shut; Mistress Brittany hovering over me, with eyes that somehow still managed to glisten with life even whilst stoic.

I wriggled for her to loosen her grip on my mouth, but she only applied more pressure, as she pressed into my torso with her own, keeping me in place. She didn't say anything, the only sound: my breath leaving my flared nostrils and hitting her hand.

"When you're with me, I'm running things," she whispered, pressing herself even flatter against me. My eyes fluttered shut, because she smelled gorgeous, and her warm, perky, clothed breasts melting into mine felt pristine.

"Look at you loving every second of this. I bet you'd do anything I told you to if you thought it would draw you a step closer to tasting my skin," she continued to whisper, inches away from my face; I could feel her warm breath gush at my skin with every word she spoke.

I opened my eyes, feeling them widen at her unexpected comment.

"I didn't tell you that you could send me naked pictures. That's another luxury you have to earn. Also, I don't like the way that you just spoke to me out there, so you're going to be punished. Am I clear, Santana?"

Her eyes said that I had no choice, despite the question she'd just asked.

"Mmfhh," I hummed against her palm, which was now condensated and humid due to the fact that I'd been breathing out into it.

Slowly, her hand came away from my mouth, but no sooner than I was able to once again suck air in past my lips, her hand slipped around the back of my neck, fingers tugging aggressively at the hairs there. "Kiss me," she suddenly said.

Before she was on her next breath, I threw my mouth at hers. Our teeth clashed, and our tongues swirled forcefully around one another. She sunk her teeth into my bottom lip, pulling back with it and letting it snap back to my face.

I could feel that my eyes were hooded as I leapt forward for her lips again, holding nothing back. We were messy, so deliciously messy, and the fact that I could taste the sweet sauce from the sandwich that she'd been eating earlier, was nothing but a turn on. My head slammed back into the wall with the push and pull of our kissing, whilst Miss Brittany's hands slid up my ribcage and grabbed at my arms, pinning my wrists up above my head.

She held me in this position as she pulled away from my mouth, my tongue still sandwiched between her soft lips. I whimpered when she eventually released the muscle with a wet popping noise, and I circled my lips with said tongue.

"I'm gonna fuck you so hard, you're not gonna be able to walk or sit down," I growled through shallow pants of breath, filth dripping from every syllable.

Miss Brittany snatched my sweatshirt at the chest, pulled me away from the wall, and shoved me down on the toilet seat.

Between my legs burned and ached and oozed for her to do something.

"You want me to suck on your clit?" she asked through swollen pink lips and a dirty smirk.

My eyes rolled back in my head at the thought of having her down there, between my legs. "Fuck yes," I gasped, clenching my thighs together as I fidgeted on the toilet seat. "I'm gonna come, so hard, in your mouth."

Mistress Brittany straddled my lap, snatching my wrists and pinning them above my head to the piped wall directly behind the toilet. Having her sat on me, her weight, her warmth – everything – was delicious. I didn't want her ever to get up. We stared into each other's eyes for a moment, with me grinning and her smirking. "If you want me, you'll do as I say from now on. No stalling, no refusals, no back chat. I own you."

I nodded eagerly. "You own me."

A wide smile fluttered over her gorgeous face and I felt high off of it.

"Good. Now close your eyes," she instructed, her voice smoky and seductive.

Instantly I shut them, opening the door to a world of darkness and delicious uncertainty.

I felt Miss Brittany's weight shift a little, then there was a tug on my wrists, before something cold quickly circled both of them with a chilling click. A click that sounded like imprisonment.

My eyes snapped open, peering up at my wrists, which were now bound to one of the toilet's pipes via a set of heavy silver handcuffs. I rattled them ferociously, achieving nothing but an earful of harsh clanging noise, all whilst Miss Brittany sat on me, looking at her wristwatch. "Time for me to go finish my sandwich."

All lust evaporated as though it had never been, and I pinned her with stormy eyes. "You better unlock these first." I rattled my restraints again, furious, "I swear to God -"

"You'll be in here for however long it takes you to figure out how to free yourself. In the meantime," she said, lifting up out of her straddle astride my lap, whilst nonchalantly patting the wrinkles from her clothes and hair, "you'll think about how you now belong to me, because that's what you are now; mine. When someone asks you what you do for a living, you'll respond with, 'I belong to Brittany,' from now on. If I find out that you ever answer otherwise, you'll be punished with something equally as humiliating as this." She nodded down at me, at my situation. "This isn't solely sexual. Your decision to come here and meet me today will touch almost every aspect of your life. You sit and think about that." Spinning around to back me, she pulled open the stall door, and passed through it with a casual mussing of her bangs, like this had been a casual trip to the toilet for her.

In stark disbelief, I watched her disappear from sight, only awakening when the quieting click of her heels occurred to me. "Brittany!" I yelled, my echoes bouncing around the confining stall as the reality of the situation truly sunk in, but my call was met with nothing but the sound of the bathroom door opening and swinging shut.

**So that's chapter two. Tell me if you liked it, and well if you hated it, then forever hold your silence : P S  
**


	3. Chapter 3

**Are you guys fucking kidding me? 54 reviews and 151 follows for only two chapters? Thanks to every single one of you. I really hope you continue to enjoy this story. I received some ridiculously nice comments, which I was both flattered and intimidated by all at once lol. To those who thanked me for not going down the G!P path, you're welcome. I hate reading a good summary and then finding out that the story is gip, so I feel you on that.**

**To Crashkill, sorry for setting your brain on fire. I hope that there's at least some part of it still functioning so that you can read this chapter though ;P**

**To Heavenly Divine, I'm not planning on writing a chapter from Brittany's POV, simply because to know what she's thinking would put a pin in the great big balloon of tension that I'm trying to create here. Everything relating to Brittany will be perceived through Santana's eyes.**

**To ****Ascoeur.** **AGAIN****, maybe Brittany has a sweeter side. Who knows? If she does though, you'll have to wait until Santana uncovers it ;) I love me some fluff too. It's ALWAYS better with feelings!**

**Let's proceed with the story then shall we?**

The darkest tinted sunglasses were not going to be enough. If I was going to leave my condo, then sunglasses just were _not_ going to cut it. Instead I was going to have to pencil on some sort of mustache, and ball all of my luscious hair up so that I could stuff it beneath one of the snapbacks that I kept in the bottom of my closet. Hopefully people would think that I was just some stocky little Hispanic dude with a slightly effeminate walk when they looked at me.

Whatever, I didn't want to be Santana Lopez today.

"Uuuhghh!" I groaned into both of my hands, further grunting, "this is not _**fucking**_ happening to me."

Without any sort of warning, something forcefully snapped around the back of my head and left again. I quickly lifted my startled face up out of my palms, and in just enough time to catch a widely grinning Puck hastily retreating the rolled up magazine in his hand back to his lap, like nothing had happened.

The silence between us grew icicles challenging that of Narnia as I narrowed a glare comprised of pure Satanism at him.

He shrugged, still wearing that asinine grin.

"That's your response? – To hit me in the back of the head with a magazine, you fuck?" I reached over and ripped the magazine from his grasp, before throwing it across the room with every ounce of frustration that I could pour into the muscles of my arm. It thudded against the painting hung up on the opposite wall with all the venom that I'd intended, and then slid down to the floor, out of sight where it belonged.

"Ok," he sighed, his face swiftly deflating of his grin. "But you need to snap out of…" He gestured his hand around at all that was me. "_This_."

That was his miracle advice? Snap out of it?

"You know, this is totally why - despite your rugged good lucks and astounding physique - you're still single. Nobody wants a fucktard for a boyfriend."

"Nobody wants a killjoy for a friend either," he mumbled under his breath.

"Yet you continue to stick around, even when you're not wanted." I deadpanned. "Like right now. Why is that?"

"Whatever. You and your family love me. I'm the Diego to your Dora the Explorer."

"Whatever," I growled.

"Man, she _must_ have been smoking hot," he mused after a while, finding his way back to that stupid grin as he drummed his fingers to the armrest of my leather sofa.

As much as I wanted to find Brittany and hold her accountable for all that she'd done to me, I couldn't deny Puck's statement. "Stupidly hot," I grumbled back bitterly.

"What time are you having dinner with your family today?" Puck suddenly asked. His fingers had ceased their drumming and were now still as they rested on the sofa's armrest.

I eyed them for a moment, and then him. "Why?"

He shrugged, and then took the hand that I'd been watching up to his mohawk, ruffling it. "No reason."

Something wasn't right, but I was in too much of my own distress to pry any further or, you know, generally give a fuck.

An hour later Puck was gone, with nothing to show for his drop-in appearance but the magazine that still lay unfurled on my living room floor. I didn't know who to be the angriest at. The obvious choices were Miss Brittany or myself, but then the more I dwelled upon the situation, the more my anger zeroed in on the little dweeb that had walked into Eden's ladies room to my demands that the fire brigade be summoned immediately.

_Unsure, the __shaky __voice called out: "m-miss, are you hurt in any way? Why do you want me to call the fire brigade?"_

"_Because I'm handcuffed to a fucking pipe, that's why!" I promptly yelled back, absolutely furious over the fact that Mis__tress __Brittany had left me throbbing and bound like she had - and on top of that I'd spent the last fifteen or so minutes fidgeting on the toilet seat to keep my bladder from emptying itself without my consent. _

_The ache that had settled into my awkwardly strung__-u__p arms had since caused an intense spraying of pins and needles to prickle from my armpits to my forearms, rendering my limbs numb and heavy. But somehow I managed to rattle my burning wrists around just enough to inspire the loud clanging noise that echoed out whenever the handcuffs collided with the pipe. "I'm in this one! The middle one!"_

_There was silence, some shuffling, and then a tentative push to the cubicle door, before a pale freckled face, framed with a mop of messy __strawberry blonde__ hair, peaked inside. _

_The moment his eyes met mine they widened to perfect circles, swirling with recognition behind his glasses._

"_S-Santana Lopez," he awed, mouth hanging ajar as he stood there like the simpleton that he was, gawping._

"_Fire brigade. Call them. _**Now**_!" I grunted, forcing that last word out through caged teeth._

_The boy, who couldn't have been more than seventeen, pushed his slipping glasses further up the bridge of his cumbersomely large nose in what I think was an effort to collect himself. "Erm.__.." He vigorously shook his head, further shaking off his apparent daze. "__Hold on a second."_

_Drumming my foot to the floor impatiently, I watched as he reached into the pockets of trousers much too big for him. He rummaged around inside as though everything but the kitchen sink resided in them, and then finally nodded to himself before pulling out a phone._

_My eyes fluttered shut in partial relief. But not for a second was I naïve enough to think that I was out of deep waters just yet._

_Whilst the boy explained the situation, my situation, to the person on the other end of the line, the deep ache plaguing my bladder seemed to become much more pressing, and I found myself lapping one leg over the other and twisting in ways that caused the boy to keep frowning at me as he spoke the address of the establishment into __his__ cell phone._

"_Ok, thank you. Bye." With that, the boy flipped his phone shut and resumed his need to stand there gawping at me__ like I was live art._

"_How long are they gonna be?" I pounced, now __unabashedly __bouncing __around __on the toilet seat._

"_They didn't sa…" His answer suddenly trailed into silence, and __the__ instant I felt my sweatpants __grow warm__ around __my__ crotch area__, I knew why._

_Looking down into my lap only confirmed it. The crotch to my otherwise light grey sweats had darkened, and that dark patch was continuing to __expand__ to the mortifying soundtrack of my own urine dribbling down the basin of the toilet and puddling on the tile. _

"_Fuck__!__" I shouted__, horrified at the utter lack of control that I had over my own faculties__. "Fuck!" tore from my throat once more. The force of it – I was sure – left my tonsils frayed._

_The boy didn't say a word. Instead, he simply lifted his phone up at me and pressed the button built into its side, blinding me with a flash that instigated a__n overwhelming __swell of white spots behind my eyelids._

"_I'm sorry," he said, not really sounding all that sorry, "but I gotta pay for school somehow."_

_Intense anger powered up my legs, motivating me into trying to stand, but my forgotten restraints instantly jerked me back down to the toilet seat. So I kicked a wild leg out, hoping to at least break this kid's knee in or something. _

_My foot met nothing but __futile __air._

When my vision had finally cleared, the boy was gone, and I was afforded no time to digest what had happened because, shortly after, two firemen sauntered in wearing protective facial shields. They'd asked me what had happened, and I had told them to shut the fuck up and do their damn jobs already. So, through poorly stifled giggles and thinly veiled amusement over the fact that I, Santana Paris Lopez, had... peed all over myself, the two proceeded to take a pair of bolt cutters to the handcuffs, telling me – in that condescending lecturing tone - to take the proper precautions the next time I felt the need to add a little kink to my life, because there were far more pressing emergencies in the city for them to tend to.

As I'd walked out of the café, with the sodden fabric of my sweats clinging to my inner thighs, I had never felt so humiliated in all of my twenty-four years.

And now, two days later, here I was dealing with the fact that I'd, once again, managed to make the front cover of multiple magazines… except this time I couldn't just shrug it off and keep it moving. There was no Hollywood starlet's name in print next to mine this time, nobody for me to hide behind. Nothing for me to boast about. Instead, my name was being paraded around next to an incriminating picture and phrases such as, 'Lopez pees herself... on a toilet seat?' and 'How the mighty have fallen.'

I was being mocked.

People were laughing at me.

People.

Laughing.

At _me_!

To put it bluntly, I was going to find Mistress Brittany Sheridan and attempt to annihilate her... right after I figured out how I was going to leave the seclusion of my condo without racing back inside just seconds later, because someone's gaze lingered a little too long.

With a huff, I threw myself back into the softness of my bed like a limp rag doll, and simply lay there peering up at the ceiling, internally scolding myself for wondering whether or not Miss Brittany thought I was a good kisser, or whether or not she thought that I was hot. She made me feel my imperfections and insecurities like no other had ever been able to, with her unwavering refusal to yield to my feminine allure, and her blasé dismissal of how much money I had. My looks and affluence were my crutches, a fundamental part of who I was, and she was managing to effortlessly rip them right out from underneath me, bringing me back to earth with a disgruntled thud.

She was forcing me to feel my mortality, and I imagined doing dark things to her because of that.

Just then my phone tremored in the pocket of my silk red pajama pants, emitting three low hums.

Sitting up and expelling a weary sigh, I freed the device from its silk confines and braced myself for admonishment either from Rachel or dad, but when I peered at the small screen, the envelope icon was flashing, informing me that I had a new message. I slid the fader at the side of the object down, unlocking the screen, before tapping the pad of my finger to the flashing envelope icon.

_I got you so hot that you had to call fire services? I'm even better at this than I thought._

I blinked at the message, letting it compute.

The image of Miss Brittany sitting smug whilst she had typed out that mocking message plagued my mind into an almost itching sensation, and I found myself scratching manically for an itch that wasn't physically there at the crown of my scalp. But to no avail.

I growled and quickly pressed out a response.

_I'm going to track you down and when I do, it's not gonna be pretty. Fuck fire services. They're gonna have to call out forensics._

Content with that, I sent it off and waited, phone in hand, for her reaction.

About twenty minutes later, she replied.

_Forensics? More like a janitor to clean up your next puddle of urine. Keep talking yourself into another punishment Santana._

I frowned, deep and ugly I suspect, and sent back an instantaneous: _Fuck you_!

Miss Brittany left me drumming an impatient foot to the floor for another half an hour, before finally concerning herself with messaging me back.

_You owe me a pair of handcuffs ; )_

That was **it**!

Swiftly exiting the message application, I punched my finger to the screen of my phone until I was scrolling my contacts. When I got to _P.I Ben,_ I punched the call button and slung the device to my ear, listening to it ring.

"Hello, Ben Fullham speaking."

"Tell me," I began, rubbing a finger back and forth my chin, "if I give you a cell phone number, can you track its location?"

"Certainly," Ben chuckled out, already knowing who he was talking to. "Go ahead and text me the number Santana. I'll have the signal triangulated. As long as the targeted cell phone is turned on, I can track the approximate location and have it to you whenever you need it."

My face pulled into its first real smirk in two whole days, and it served to make me feel somewhat like myself again. "Perfect. I'll text you the number and give you a call for the location when I need it."

"Alright then. Bye."

"Bye Ben," I chirped, grinning off into my thoughts long after hanging up.

* * *

Lopez Sunday dinner was in thirty minutes.

I was expected to be there, just like every other Sunday evening. The farce of an event was tense enough on those days when I hadn't made the magazines, never mind on those days that I had… like today. I suspected that 'Lopez Sunday dinner' was the only reason why my father hadn't yet called to address the mortifying debacle currently surrounding me. He was probably waiting to see me in person, so that we could exchange stern eyes and tense silences over bowls of mashed potato and pasta, as he sat at the head of the dining table thinking up ways to explode on me when the time called for it.

Finn would most likely be there too, sat next to Rachel as he was every other Sunday, and mom would be sat next to dad, provided she was liquored up enough to endure being in the same room as me, which – come every Sunday – she always was.

I slipped a pair of dark Gucci sunglasses onto my face and pulled the beak of my snapback further down over my forehead. I'd foregone penciling on a mustache, instead deciding to butch it up in other ways, hence attiring myself in an old Levi Fenom sweat suit, and the black and grey High-top dunks that were currently snuggling my feet.

No one would suspect a thing… and if they did then I'd just deepen my voice and pretend that I didn't speak English.

"Let's do this," I told my vast bedroom mirror…

I could feel the tension the moment I pulled up on the six-car driveway of my parent's mansion, and I only perceived it to grow when their maid, Lucile, opened the front door for me, the usual perk in her cheeks lacking.

"Good evening miss Lopez," she greeted me, purely out of duty, as she stepped to the side to allow me entry.

"It's not gonna be a good evening for anybody," I replied as I strode in past her, not at all in the mood for falsities, much less with the help.

I swept past the bar area and strode through the art room, which took me to the large dining table area; the place that I'd come to associate with tension and exchanges of snide comments over the years.

I could hear the chef bustling around in the kitchen, the familiar clink of plates, glasses, and silverware. It meant that dinner was not yet ready to be served, which meant that I'd have to stick around longer than I wanted to.

"Great," I grumbled to myself, pulling out a chair at the long table and slumping into it. My fingers drummed the knots in the dark varnished wood, foot tapping the patterned fresco rug beneath the soles of my High-top dunks.

There was some brief noise that didn't sound like it was coming from the kitchen, and then Rachel suddenly swept into the room as if propelled by the winds that blustered noisily against the windows. Her long brown hair flew back from her face as she pounded the marble floor towards me, half a glass of wine and a rolled up magazine in hand.

I braced up and sucked in a discreet lung of breath, believing that it would power me through the, no doubt, imminent altercation.

The magazine slapped the table just a few millimeters away from my fingers. "What's this?" she demanded, stood over me.

I looked up into her slightly glossy eyes, pointed at her face, and asked, "what's that? - Oh, it's just your unfortunate excuse for a nose."

Pointedly sitting her glass down, she placed both of her palms to the table and bent to lower her mouth closer to my ear. "How do you expect your father to maintain an air of professionalism, an air of leadership, with your habitual need to embarrass the Lopez name? Potential clients certainly aren't going to want to invest with us if they think that Miguel can't control his own daughter! I mean..." She paused for much needed breath, her apparent frustration seeming much too big for simple words to convey. "How do you venture to even get yourself in these types of predicaments anyway? Urinating all over yourself whilst handcuffed to a toilet seat?"

I squeezed my eyes shut tight behind my shades, and dragged a hand over my tired face.

"We don't make money if people perceive the Lopez name as a joke, Santana! That also means that your lavish lifestyle stops!" Having vented the bulk of her gripe, Rachel leaned up out of my space but remained stood over me, catching her breath. "Who handcuffed you, or was it another one of your twisted little sessions with yet another woman who means nothing to you?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of mom stumbling into the room behind dad, both of their faces a mask of solemn.

My father leaned his briefcase against the plush pale sofa over in the corner, whilst my mother dragged drunken feet over towards the dining table. She could barely get her fingers to co-operate as she wrapped them around the backrest of the wooden chair and drew it out so that she could sit down. But nobody was saying anything about her antics, about her love affair with the bottle.

I rolled my eyes. The Lopez name and everything that it stood for _was _a joke. But guess what? I _wasn't_ the only clown in town.

A stony silence swirled preponderantly around us, until my father roughly tugged loose his necktie and announced, "a large sum of money is missing from my account!"

My eyebrows shot up, because I hadn't been expecting that.

He threw a nod my way. "Your friend, that uhm, that Puck - or whatever the hell he calls himself!" he barked, seemingly irritated with his own imprecision. "How well do you know him?"

I hadn't been expecting that either.

All eyes swam to me.

"Uhh... Wait hold on," I frowned, "you think _Puck_ took the money?"

We all flinched when my father's fist came down hard on the table, save my mother of course. "How well do you know him?" he demanded.

"Uhh - well, he uhh tried to hit on me in a nightclub once and -"

My mother scoffed, slurring, "talk about barking up the wrong tree."

"_And_," I pointedly continued, not bothering to acknowledge her disdain, "we became friends. He's..." I shrugged. "Just Puck."

"What's his family name?"

"Puckerman," I slowly replied, utterly perplexed at this point.

"I'll go have Joe go over all of our accounts, just to be on the safe side," Rachel spoke up, hastening from the room.

The atmosphere was completely toxic, and I didn't want any part of it. So I stood up, preparing to leave.

"Where are you going? Dinner commences in ten minutes," my father gruffed.

I sighed up at the ceiling, before answering, "I have other stuff to do."

"What, like peeing all over yourself in a public restroom for the whole world to see?"

My eyes snapped to his and my heart began to gallop.

"Sit."

With that one word, my legs bent and I begrudgingly resumed my seat.

As soon as dinner was served, I shoveled quick trips of it into my mouth until the plate gleamed, not even bothering to wash it down with a drink.

I was out of there by nine-thirty.

Outside, in the dark of my red Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren, I fumbled around for my phone, relying only on the light from the many functions built into the dashboard. When I found it, I held down the number two button, letting it speed dial Ben.

It rang five times before my ear filled with the usual: "Hello, Ben Fullham speaking."

"Can I get the location of the phone I asked you about earlier?"

"Sure," he replied. There was some silence, and then the vague noise of rustling papers, before he said, "right now, the approximate area is Wald Street, central town."

I frowned. "Wald Street?"

"Yes," he confirmed.

Then it all began to fall into place, but just to be sure I asked, "isn't there an S&M place situated on Wald Street?"

"I believe there is."

I felt the corners of my mouth turn up considerably. "Subspace."

"Subspace?"

"Yeah, that's what the place is called. Subspace."

"Hey, whatever floats your boat," Ben quipped with a small chuckle.

I rolled my eyes. "Shut up wise-ass. I know it because I drive past there all the time on the way to and from my parent's place."

"Ok."

"And hey, if the location changes, let me know _as soon as possible_," I stressed.

"Alright. I'll leave the tracking map up on my screen. If the target goes anywhere I'll see it, and I'll let you know."

I could hardly contain my glee. "You're a fucking diamond Ben. Send the bill in the post and I'll throw in a bonus or something."

"Happy to be of service," he chirped. "Bye Santana, and have fun."

"Bye."

I couldn't start the engine of my car up quickly enough, the need to see Miss Brittany's face once she'd worked out that **I** had _hunted_ **her** down, and that she wasn't nearly as in control of everything as she thought she was, taking precedence over even the most fundamental driving precautions.

I blitzed through red lights, cut other vehicles off, and broke multiple speed limits until I was pulling into the parking lot just left of the actual Subspace building. Once I was parked up and surrounded by columns of vehicles, I found myself wondering which car belonged to Miss Brittany - if any of them at all.

When I took my first step into the foyer of the establishment, I noted that the atmosphere was that of your typical low-lit nightclub, except no music could be heard. The floor was dressed in a deep red carpet, the walls swirling with a modern vector pattern that seemed to imitate the behavior of smoke.

"Can I help you miss?"

At the sound of that voice, I glanced to the side. A man, wearing a very nice suit, was stood behind what I can only describe as a black leather reception counter. He wore a kind smile, like he could smell that this was my first time ever stepping foot into one of these places.

I approached the counter, making sure to keep my head down - not that he'd know who I was with the beak of my snapback casting down so heavily over my Gucci's. But I didn't need to see my name in print again anytime soon, so my head remained bowed, even as I asked, "how much to gain admission?"

"We only charge men. It's free for women," he replied, keeping up that smile. "However, if you come in on couples only night with a partner, you both will be charged an admission fee, regardless of gender."

I nodded. "Ok."

"Will you be staying?" he politely inquired.

I nodded once more.

"Just make your way through there." He cast his finger at a set of double doors to his right. "That will take you through to the locker room, where you'll change into a white towel." He then disappeared down behind the counter, re-emerging seconds later with a numbered key. "Here," he said, sliding it across the counter. "Use that to open the locker corresponding with the key number. There will be a clean white towel inside, and you can store the clothes that you have on now inside of it."

"Thanks," I muttered, taking the key in hand.

"The locker room opens out to a staircase. Up there is where most of the activities take place. Enjoy your evening." He finalized his instructional speech with another smile, and I sauntered off through the double doors.

The locker room was eerily quiet, save a few who were shedding their clothes to slip into the mandatory white towel provided.

A middle-aged white man was getting changed over in the corner. I watched him in the same way that you'd watch a car pile-up; against your own will but fascinated to the point that you're unable to look away. He'd just lost his baggy white Y-fronts and was now stood there in all of his glory, stuffing them into his assigned locker for the night.

I hadn't seen a penis in years, but when I saw his, its appearance limp and baggy like a balloon that'd been blown up and let back down again, I knew that I wasn't missing out on anything.

There was no way that I was about to strip down to nothing but a white towel. I wasn't here for that. So I slid my locker key into my pocket and acted as casual as possible as I ascended the staircase that the man in the foyer had described.

Having quickly reached the top, I stole a few glances at the clusters of people that were dressed in nothing but white towels. There were a few average-looking middle-aged couples, an old white man accompanied by a gorgeous Asian woman with awesome full breasts, and a handful of black men. They were all filtering into one of the many tiny rooms lining either side of the walls.

"I don't envy the broad that has to clean this place up," I muttered under my breath.

It was dark, making it difficult to process exactly what I was seeing, but as I passed room after room my eyes adapted, showing me a trend of men who had their hands underneath their towels, tugging and moaning, whilst others watched.

Other rooms I walked past were inhabited by two women or more.

From the door-window of one particular room, I watched two women whimper shallow breaths against one another's mouths as they humped animalistically, whilst a muscular masked man yanked on the leather collar that was fitted around the top's neck.

"Holy fuck," I whispered against the glass, condensating it a little.

It was one thing to watch porn, but to actually see people having sex only a couple of feet away from me was an experience unlike any other. It was novel, this place. The idea that you could just walk in and get someone to have sex with you, without the need to shell out for dinner or make boring awkward small talk, was liberating in a way. I briefly wondered why I'd never been to one of these places before, but then I remembered the very real possibility of contracting a sexually transmitted disease, which crashed that train of thought instantly.

But make no mistake about it, I was severely flustered. The noises, the visuals; it was all making my head swim… and my thighs clench.

Just then a blast that sounded very much like the crack of a whip lashed out, followed closely by a loud whine. Like a sobering slap, it served as a reminder as to why I'd come here in the first place.

Mistress Brittany.

People gave me unreadable looks as I continued to trail the long hallway peeking into doors for Mistress Brittany. I put the stares down to the fact that I was still fully clothed, and kept up my search… but to no avail. Miss Brittany seemed to be nowhere in sight.

With copious reluctance, I had decided to give up the hunt, but then I caught sight of another staircase. Its rails were a glistening chrome whereas the rails to the first flight of stairs had been black. The man downstairs in the foyer had mentioned nothing about a third floor, which led me to believe that that was where the really intense stuff lived.

If Mistress Brittany wasn't anything else, she was intense.

Feeling like I was somehow now trespassing, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that I wasn't being watched, and when the coast seemed clear I quickly shot up each step, looking behind every now and then to assure myself that I wasn't being followed.

When I finally reached the top of the flight, I understood why the rails to the staircase leading up here were a regal chrome. This floor was plush, like what a VIP area was to a nightclub. Extravagant chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and a long expensive-looking red and gold rug carpeted the narrow floor. The rooms downstairs had been tiny, unlike the rooms – or chambers – that I now seemed to be peering into. Everything was quiet, no groans of ecstasy, and no callous cracks of whips. There was even an elevator, which I assumed went down directly to the ground floor to assist all those permitted to use it in cutting out having to mingle with the riffraff just below.

To be frank, this floor made downstairs seem like a lower astral realm.

If Mistress Brittany was in this building, then up here was where she would be. I was sure of it.

Careful to be quiet, I padded by chamber after chamber, each one revealing itself to be void of any human life. Though I did notice that every one of them contained at least one wall socket – for electrical stimulation I assumed.

She stepped out of nowhere, startling and halting me in my tracks.

Complex blue eyes that sparkled like the tip of a knife pinned me from beneath the small beak of the leather dominatrix hat that sat on her head. The hat was shaped like that of a cop's, the area just above the beak studded with five or six small silver spikes. Her long blonde hair, the straightest that I'd ever seen it, rivered down past her shoulders and flowed like fields of gold into her flawless cleavage, which was being held together by what looked to be a red and black latex corset. Black fishnet suspender tights ran the never-ending entities that were her legs, their length only further accentuated by the shiny black heels sitting on her feet.

Our stare-down sent electrical currents trickling up and down my spine, and in that moment I was certain that she was **the** single most beautiful woman that I had ever seen in all of my life.

**I've never been to a sex club, so if anything was inaccurate I'm sorry. I tried to write it in a way that would seem realistic even if inaccurate. Though I doubt any of you will call me on any inaccuracies because then that'll out your inner freak lmao! Google helped me immensely with my inexperience when it comes to sex clubs, so thanks google. Let me know if you enjoyed it.**

**Btw, what are communities? This fic has been added to two on here and I have no idea what it is.  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**Thanks to everybody that has shown this story love! Seriously, it's ridiculously flattering! Keep the comments coming.**

**To me, yes I had to google S&M clubs lol. I was disappointed. I didn't even get to see a nipple :(  
**

**To ducksticks, ;) lol  
**

**To Shine90, screw me? hahahaha! If you pay for dinner first then certainly :P  
**

**To Justified12, I have no idea what genre to slip this one into. I'm just glad you think it's fun. Questions, questions, questions indeed. Maybe Brittany was up there with a client ; )  
**

**A special shout-out to unicorn223, because your enthusiasm for this fic is adorable!  
**

**Anywho, here's chapter four guys. It continues straight on for where we left off last chapter.**

* * *

All of the hatred that I thought I felt for Miss Brittany folded under my awe, those hostile feelings seemingly tucked away in the pocket of a parallel dimension. I'd wanted to upset the balance of power in my favor, but as I stared at her and could think of nothing but kneeling at her stomach, nipping, smelling, and kissing at it, whilst she pressed her palm to the crown of my head and forced me to venture lower, I didn't care about which way the scales of power were tipped.

I wanted her, and I was _going_ to have her.

My feet took the initiative, propelling me towards her with fervor that verged on a maddened sprint. One foot almost tripped over the other in my rush, but there was too much heat swirling inside of my panties for me to even consider feeling any embarrassment.

"Stay where you are," she ordered, with a dark reservedness that I'd come to expect from her.

But I didn't heed her demand. I continued to approach, only slowing when one of her black-leather-gloved hands slid around to her back and lingered there, ominously out of sight.

Her clear cat-like blue eyes minimized to a challenging squint, daring me to lift my foot and take another step.

I quickly resolved to still my eager feet, simply because I didn't feel like getting maced or pepper-sprayed - or accosted with whatever it was that was concealed just behind her hour-glass hip.

At my prompt obedience she smirked, which caused only one side of her lips to twitch up, her slowly shaping cheekbone making her look like an exquisite model. But no sooner than the smirk was there Miss Brittany had reset her face to one of business. "You're learning," she said, bringing her hidden hand out from behind her back to reveal a taught fore-arm length black whip which had your typical leather loop at the end.

Before I could process what was happening, Miss Brittany began to take long flawless strides towards me, strides that quickly ate up most of the distance lingering between us. Not even affording me time to flinch, she expertly snapped the whip's end out to the underside of my snapback's beak, sending it spiraling off of my head to the red and gold rug.

Like the waves of the ocean, my mussed mane fell around my ears and shoulders.

The release seemed to fan away the mist of taught abs, flustered pink nipples, and glistening vulva lips that had taken my mind hostage when I'd first set eyes on her in that outfit. And just like that she was the enemy again, the fuck-slut that had strung me up to a pipe in a public restroom, the reason why the world was **laughing** **at** **me**.

When she reached out and knocked the sunglasses off of my face, those feelings only strengthened.

I threw my hand out at her whip, squeezing my fingers tight around the end of it as I scowled menacingly up at her. "Bitch, you think your little stunt was funny? You have no idea what _you're_ in for, blondie. I'm going to make your life _hell_!" I gruffed.

Her eyes dropped fluidly down to my fist, and then rose back up to my face. "Let go," she told me.

"Let go?" I challenged loudly, giving the whip a hard tug in the hopes of unarming it from her grasp, but the force of the motion merely brought her right along with it, her chest colliding with mine. The impact forced me sideways slightly, and that small loss of balance was all that it took for Mistress Brittany to rip her whip completely from my hold and forcefully push me back into the wall with a painful dull thud.

Under their own steam, my eyelids fluttered shut and then lifted again. The gorgeous scent that was wafting up into my nostrils from her cleavage had told them to.

The familiarity of our position sparkled impishly in Miss Brittany's eyes as I wriggled, unsuccessfully, for her to release me. She slowly slid the gloved hand that was pressed firm to my chest up my neck and past my chin, her thumb and index finger suddenly clamping my lips together tightly. "You can kid yourself all you want to, Santana, but..." She paused to draw her face in right up next to my ear, whispering a warm and seductive, "we both know that you're a pussy-hungry slave that will do anything for her fix. The sad truth of the matter is that you'll do anything that I tell you too, because you need to touch me and lick me and bite me. Nothing else makes sense to you."

I fought, hard, to control the shudder that rippled low in my stomach at hearing her talk such filth to me. But she was just so fucking... ugh! Fuck!

Pulling back a little, she silently brought the end of her whip up to my nose, tapping a few times before slowly gliding it down the thick grey fabric of my sweatshirt. It stopped at my crotch, pressing deliciously into my clit. "You love this. You love the marks that those handcuffs left around your wrists. But most of all, you love knowing that you belong to me. Say it!" she said sternly, beating the whip's end to my clothed core to add exclamation to the demand. She then carefully released my lips and stood before me expectantly.

I gulped.

"Say it!" she repeated, flicking the whip at my core with a little more force.

I squeezed my eyes shut as my thighs clenched, and expelled a jittery breath, gulping hard against the desert atmosphere spanning the cavity of my throat. "I... I-I-"

"Why are you stammering? It's not difficult; I told you what to say. Now say it, and say it clearly."

"...no."

Miss Brittany smirked as her eyebrows rose. "No?"

I shook my head with growing rebellion. "No."

"You're a naughty one," she chuckled, her eyes laden with something that let me know that I'd pay for my refusal to comply.

I waited, ready to defend myself in any way that was necessary. But when nothing happened, I grew more confident, the reason for me being here bobbing back up to the surface with a vengeance. "When you least expect it; that's when I'm gonna strike. You better sleep with one mother fucking eye open - better yet, don't sleep at a-"

Strong hands suddenly dug into my hips and before I could question anything, I was being hiked up and spun around, my nose, lips, and eyebrow bones mushing quite painfully into the wall in front of me. As my diaphragm expanded and sunk in quick puffs, one of Miss Brittany's arms slipped around my waist, its hand pressing into my stomach. I briefly wondered what her other hand - the one that wielded the whip - was doing, but the answer swiftly presented itself when the thumb to said hand hooked into the waistband of my sweats and performed one powerful tug.

I sucked in a gasp.

Cold air rushed up my legs and prickled at my butt cheeks as my sweats piled around my ankles, having taken my black lace panties along with them.

Pressing her entire front tight and warm against my back, Miss Brittany walked slow teasing fingers over the soft hood encasing my pulsing clitoris, and then quickly snatched my entire center up into the palm of her hand.

"Fuck," I whispered, eyes floating shut as my entire frame shuddered to what felt like the magnitude of a tumble dryer on a hot wash.

"See this?" she asked, tugging upwards on my inflamed slickening lips, to the point that I had to stand on tiptoes. "I own this. It belongs to me. When I tell you to do something, you do it," she husked, her warm breath rushing into my ear. "_Say_ **it**," she enunciated, like this was my one final chance to obey.

"It belongs to you," I breathed out, instantly hating myself for complying - for letting the fire down there spread to my brain, for proving her right in her theory that I was desperate. Desperate to touch and lick and bite her. Desperate for her to do the same to me.

"After you've fixed yourself up, you're gonna go downstairs, give Antonio your locker key, and leave. Do I make myself clear?"

I barely nodded, hating myself for that too. How I was going to look myself in the mirror after this exchange I had no freaking idea.

"Good," Miss Brittany said. "Keep this up and one of these days maybe you'll earn a reward, instead of constantly making me punish you."

Even when she removed the warmth of her body from my back and uncupped my sex, I remained pressed up against the wall, eyes closed. I wanted to turn around and fuck the living wheels off of her.

"Move it!" she suddenly hastened, making me flinch out of the filth that was playing out on the insides of my eyelids.

Almost sluggish, like I'd just awoken from a dreamy sleep - or had a thorough orgasm - I reached down and pulled my sweats up, running a hand through my tussled locks as I picked up my Gucci's from the floor and slid them over my lust-drooped eyes. I could feel Miss Brittany watching my every move - every swallow, every intake and exhalation of breath - like she was studying how I worked and waiting to offer out correction.

I was far too aroused to feel intimidated by it though. In fact, it was only serving to feed my throbbing heat, having her watch me, those complex blue eyes focusing solely on me.

"Leave the hat on the floor," Miss Brittany instructed.

Her words, seemingly out of nowhere, knitted a crinkle in my brow. "What?"

She nodded towards the floor, towards my snapback, repeating, "_leave_ the _hat_ on the _floor_."

I quickly realized what she was planning for me and felt my eyes grow to that of planets. "I am _not_ going down there without the hat on. People will know who I am!" I stressed.

Miss Brittany strode past me like my gripe was the most insignificant foolery she'd ever heard, and then she bent down, snatching my hat up off of the expensive rug. She looked me straight in the face, effortlessly twirled my snapback around on two fingers, and replied with an almost bored, "you should've thought about that before you showed up here uninvited." Her head bobbed sideways, towards the staircase. "Now get down there."

I stood there just staring at her, feigning acquiescence, before quickly lunging for the hat. But by the time my hand got there, my fingers were grasping at nothing but air. "Fuck!" I grunted, elbowing the wall beside me. "Give me my hat," I growled, glaring daggers at Miss Brittany under my eyelids.

"I'll alert security if you try to take it again. A spectacle will be made, and I'll make sure that the story reaches mainstream news. You're gonna learn to do what I say first time; I'm not playing with you."

I squeezed my fists by my sides and began to pace back and forth like a caged animal, all whilst glowering at the look of smug indifference holding Miss Brittany's expression.

She'd won this bout and she knew it.

After quite a while of stomping back and forth, I accepted that my infuriated growls, grunts, and glares were doing me more harm than good, and stood still, sighing out a weary, "look, just give me my hat."

But for a blink of her unchanging blue hues, Miss Brittany didn't react at all.

It was then that I knew that I was going to have to try a different tactic, so I stood there for a few seconds ransacking the libraries of my mind.

In the moment that the solution came barreling into my mind, I reached a hand around the back of my neck and began to rub the flesh there, hoping to soothe my pride's valiant protests into submission. "Jesus Christ," I muttered to myself.

"Jesus can't help you," Miss Brittany said. "In fact, I doubt that he was ever even real."

Extending an expectant palm out towards the gloved hand that was holding my snapback captive, I swallowed all pride, and pleaded, "can I _please_ have my hat back, please?"

There. I'd done it. I'd... begged.

"I'll take your glasses too if you ask me again," she swiftly replied. "Now leave."

"Why the fuck are you doing this to me?" I exploded, running a frustrated hand back through my hair.

"I don't like your smart mouth, or your inability to follow orders straight away. On top of that, you thought you were slick; having one of your private investigators seek me out?" She shook her head from side to side and tutted in disapproval, whilst regarding me under eyelashes as long as a southern summer. "You're getting off lightly."

How the fuck was this woman so perceptive? I could've tracked her down a multitude of other ways - word of mouth, anything - yet she seemed to know that I'd used a P.I, and if she knew that then she probably knew that I'd had her tracked by way of her cell phone.

I was fucked - holstered up by bondage that nobody, but me and Miss Brittany, could see. She wasn't going to negotiate with me, and I couldn't risk my name ending up in print so soon after the Eden debacle. This was a God damn sex club. They would have a fucking field day making up headlines after I'd peed myself.

'_Lopez frequents S&M club to satisfy diaper fetish_!'

The choices were clear; scurry out of this place wearing my Gucci's, with my chin tucked tight to my chest, or snatch my hat from Miss Brittany's grasp and have security swarm on me, and then later the media.

"Getting off lightly," I grumbled to myself, thoroughly disgruntled as I stomped towards the staircase...

I was out under the vast misty moon-lit sky, scurrying in the direction of my car as I fumbled with its alarm, before I knew it.

Once inside, I placed my palm over my galloping chest and exhaled a long hard breath. "Holy Jesus on a cracker!" I murmured over the silence.

I didn't think that anybody had recognized me. Somebody would've said something, or at least tried to pull me into one of those rooms to fuck me, right? Miss Brittany had cursed me with the misfortune of having to wait, addled with worry, to see if any stories surfaced over the next few days.

But in the meantime, I was going to make it my absolute sole purpose to find out as much information about her as I could. This wasn't just about banging her anymore. No; I wanted to strip her down to the real her – the woman behind the whip. There was no way that she was _that_ intense with everybody. She was human, I think, which meant that she had to eat and take a shit, and go shopping for tampons just like the fucking rest of us. She had to have her bad days and her good, people she either liked or disliked, a favorite song, a favorite color... right?

My sweatpants hummed just then, Deadmau5's '_I Remember_' playing low and muffled until I reached into my pocket and took out my cell phone, letting the chilled beat swirl around, crisp and clear, in the dark of the car.

The screen flashed with Puck's name, and I was instantly taken back to the excruciating dinner that I'd endured at my parent's mansion just hours ago.

Eager to quiz him about the situation, I touched the pick-up icon and slipped the device through my hair to my ear. "Puck?"

"Santana," he stated, as though that was it and he intended to say no more.

Silence tapped heavily against my ear.

"Why are you calling me?" I pressed, with a snappiness that spoke my impatience.

"I-I need to talk to you..."

"I wanted to talk to you too actually."

"You first," he quickly insisted, seeming slightly relieved.

Well, there was no point in pussy-footing around. "Did you steal money from my father's bank account?"

The other end of the line remained absolutely silent but for the hush wisps of breath softly coasting from Puck's lips.

In that very moment, the truth stood tall and bold, as if questioning how I ever could have doubted it in the first place.

"What the _fuck_?" I barked. "Are you fucking _kidding_ me?"

"I-It's not what you thi - I mean it is what you - but you don't know all the," he sighed heavily, "facts."

"Don't know all the facts? You **stole** from my family, from me! How did you? - _Why_ did..."

Every question that I'd been getting ready to pelt at Puck faded from mind as the screen of my windshield showed me a tall blonde woman crossing the street. I squinted at the figure, making out the high bun that her hair was keeping, along with the black snapback that was poised between the fingers of her one hand.

Mistress Brittany.

No longer was her slender frame attired in a hat, corset, suspenders, and tights. She was now dressed in the same grey hoody and sweatpants that she'd been wearing the night I had met her, a long black duffel bag slung high up on her shoulder. Those fuck-me heels were gone too, replaced with sneakers so white that they made the stars seem as though they weren't shining anymore.

Was she coming this way?

I quickly ducked down low, keeping my head up just far enough to see out over the dashboard. She walked past the cluster of swaying bushes on the corner and glided straight past me.

My heart slowed with the smirk that grew into my cheek.

"You walk home," I mused aloud, watching as she brisked the pavement leading towards a closed-up convenience store.

"Santana?" Puck asked, his voice light and thin like he was holding in a breath.

I frowned at the interruption, snarling, "I'ma get into your ass about this tomorrow," before hanging up and tossing the phone to the passenger seat.

Wincing in anticipation of the noisy engine, I pressed my thumb print to the scanner built into the dashboard, cranked the gear stick to the left, and pressed my foot to the accelerator pedal, slowly rounding out of the parking lot.

For stretches, I maintained a safe distance and a nice inconspicuous pace behind Miss Brittany, surprising even myself with my ability to be stealthy. In videogames, such as _Grand_ _Theft_ _Auto_, I always failed those tailing missions, either slipping too far behind the vehicle that I was following, or getting too close. But here I was following Mistress Brittany to wherever it was that she was headed, flying completely under the radar.

Ben would've been proud.

The other vehicles on the road made the act of blending in that much easier; my car wasn't the only expensive car around in these parts.

Miss Brittany rubbed the end of her pinkening nose with an open palm as she peered left and right, before crossing the street into Pinecrest Drive.

She was cold. The way that she hugged her midsection and hunched ever so slightly said so.

Nothing so mundane had ever been so fascinating to me.

I watched on, with studious focus, as she then reached up and tugged the scrunchie from her hair. It fell to just above her shoulders in tussled blonde tresses, allowing the breeze to gently comb through the kinks that the bun had created.

But something about it was different. It had reached down into her perfect cleavage just half an hour ago.

"Extensions. Of course," I duhed myself, steadily rolling further up into Pinecrest Drive.

It was like she had shed her mistress persona with every step that had taken her further away from the club, simply becoming Brittany - or whoever the person before me really was.

The notion intrigued me beyond what I knew to be healthy.

It was only when Miss Brittany took out a chain of keys and stopped at a house which boasted a sizable black gate, that I too halted the wheels of my car, watching the scene as though salty-sweet popcorn rested at my side.

The house wasn't small, but it wasn't of superfluous grandeur either. The bricks comprising the homely structure hinted towards a burnt orange hue in the dark of the night, and the two front windows which had been built-in either side of the white door were vast, although one of them was shrouded by a small shrub that seemed to be growing just in front of it.

Miss Brittany hiked her duffel bag higher up on her shoulder and passed through the gate, making sure to latch it before walking the short path to the front door.

I waited, patiently, until she disappeared inside before gradually pushing my foot down and accelerating.

My wheels rolled to a steady standstill just in front of the first window. The curtains hadn't yet been drawn, which meant that I could peer inside unencumbered. Light illuminated the room, making it easy to note a beige couch with rose-colored patterns lacing throughout. Craning my neck to get a better look, I caught sight of the little blonde-haired girl – maybe five or six - sat on the far end of it. A single knee was drawn up to her chest, her other leg dangling so that her bare foot was peeking out the bottom of her pink pajama bottoms and brushing the floor.

"No fucking way," slipped quietly from my lips.

Suddenly, the little girl sprung up with life that only a child could possess. Seeming excited, she pounded her feet across the floor with speed that caused the hem of her white vest to dance, and then collided with long legs that were adorned in baggy grey sweatpants, throwing her pale little arms around them and squeezing to the point that I could make out the small flexing of her muscles, even from here.

With wide eyes, I watched Miss Brittany toss her duffel bag off to the floor and scoop the little girl up into her arms with a warm heartfelt smile. She pressed her lips to the girl's cheeks repeatedly and puffed her cheeks to blow raspberries, causing the minor to flail her legs and arms around in a fit of giggles.

It looked to be a bond between mother and daughter.

* * *

**What did you think? Do you like these new developments? Are you intrigued by them? Let me know : )**


	5. Chapter 5

**Wow, overwhelmed with the amount of reviews I received for the last chapter. Thank you guys! The response was indeed mixed, maybe a little more negative than positive. I have to disagree with those complaining that the fic is now cliché, but I get that you guys don't know what's coming, so it would seem that way to you. Also, I'm not concerned with what other fics are doing, or how many other stories are cultivated around similar circumstances as this story. No other story will ever deliver the ideas that I have for this fic like I will, because I'm a completely separate entity to those other authors, which is what I think really maintains the uniqueness of any story anyway. I will just say that if you're no longer getting what you want from the story, then stop reading. It's my story, and my vision, and I'm going to tell it the way that speaks the loudest to me, otherwise there's not all that much point.**

**Whew. I had to get firm there. Some of you guys be making me act like Miss Brittany lmfao!**

**To dom, I think I've conveyed that she's comfortable with the acts, and even enjoys the power that comes with it. She's controlling and mostly maintains the upper hand. As for being a paid dominatrix contradicting everything that a dom stands for (due to the idea that she doesn't really want to do it but is doing it simply for the money, which would in fact render her powerless) you will just have to read on ; ) PS: bear in mind that she declined Santana's money at the beginning. That's partly because she enjoys what she does. She would've charged Santana to the sky and back, regardless of the lesson that she was trying to teach her, if she didn't.**

**To era, it's interesting that you would pose that idea ; ) For it to work, there would have to be a level of trust maintained first though. That would make it much more interesting ; )**

**To the guest that said that it was OOC for Britt to have an accidental baby or a kid with someone she's not in love with, because of how careful and controlled dom!Britt is, you know very little about Brittany at this point. There's been almost no background on her thus far to explain how she came to be the way that she is, or how long she's been the way that she appears, and for good reason. I've done quite a bit of research, and it'll make sense when all is revealed I hope. It makes sense to me at least. You can suggest anything that pleases you, of course, but my own creativity has inspired and excited me enough to take me this far into the story, so I think I'm going to stick with it.**

**To anon, i did state in the summary that Britt learns a few things too, which would suggest that she's not entirely in control or complete. But again, britt enjoys her job.  
**

**To, GotztaGay, I'm having so much fun seeing her characterization materialise in my mind. I love it!**

**To PopMuzika, I loved your review from start to finish lol!**

**Disclaimer: I'm just going to go ahead and put a trigger warning here. I don't want to give anything away, but just know that a topic that some may find disturbing or triggering will occur in this chapter. However, if you are particularly sensitive to triggering subjects, and wish to know what specific topic I'm referring to without reading the chapter, then please go to the end of the chapter, where the specific trigger is listed.  
**

**Ok then, let's get into chapter 5 shall we?**

* * *

I pushed open wide the kitchen window, welcoming in the rush of cold fresh air that I hoped would go some way in erasing the musty stench of the meal I'd just burned.

Padding away from the window and across my lounge, I perched myself on the seats that lined the breakfast bar, and proceeded to pour a generous amount of wine out into the glass waiting for me.

I quickly lifted the glass to the parting between my lips and threw back its contents with gusto.

_Now_ I was ready.

Finally, I looked at Puck, and then reached over to slap the seat two away from mine.

Like a zombie, he shuffled towards the bar and sat down.

"Why?" I asked, knowing that I needn't add any more.

Puck eyed me, his dark hues laden with vague suspicion – most likely because he'd been expecting my fist to be halfway through his throat right about now, but it wasn't. Instead I was sat composed before him, awaiting an explanation.

To be honest, a large portion of my mind's focus was still lingering in last night with Brittany and the little blonde child that had stormed her with felt adoration the moment she'd gotten in the front door. So many questions were playing bumping cars in my head, that I literally lacked the energy to be all up in Puck's face. I mean, I now knew where Brittany lived; I could find out her real name, her past, her present. I'd already given Ben her address to look into, and I was **so** eager to get into all of that.

But first I had to deal with Puck's betrayal.

He was staring at me like a little boy pleading a reprieve, and it was nothing but infuriating.

"Talk!" I demanded, slinging my hand up before letting it limpen back to the surface of the bar top. "Say something!"

As the seconds flittered by in nothing but silence, I snatched the wine bottle's neck and tilted its lips over the rim of my empty glass, listening to the fizzy beige liquid glugging as it gained in volume.

I was probably going to need the whole bottle: I could just see it now. That was one way for me to try to feel close to my mother, right?

"Puck, start the _fuck_ talking before I lose my shit," I hissed.

He bowed his head, showing me the bird's-eye view of his product-free mohawk, and fiddled with the shiny gold band situated just below the last knuckle on his right hand's middle finger. "My mom's sick, Santana." He looked up into my eyes and reaffirmed, "_really_ sick. I took the money to pay medical bills."

I threw that second glassful down my throat, gulping down the liquid with an audible squelch, before I pointedly thunked the glass back down to the counter. "Not that I'm a cruel cold-hearted bitch or anything, but I sort of am - which leads me to ask why the fuck you didn't just clean more pools to pay for the bills! My father's furious, and he suspects that it was you."

Puck resumed the bowing of his head, but his fingertips had halted on that ring. He then mumbled something that not even the most perceptive of sound engineers would be able to decipher.

"What?" I asked, cocking my ear out as if listening for far away secrets.

"I want to show you something," he quietly said.

Usually, I would've made some quip about how I didn't want to see his shriveled up penis, but there was no place for that here.

I extended my neck up at him as he stood, watching whilst he tugged his shirt open from its ribs, the buttons clicking apart like the smattering of applause. He quickly shrugged the blue garment back off of his tan muscular arms, and I briefly followed it to the floor with my gaze, before refocusing on him.

As well as his jeans, he was now clad in a thin dark-brown baggy jumper with an ape-like insignia on it; the one where the neck was torn and fraying, the one with the two holes in the sleeves, the two holes that seventeen-year-old me would poke my fingers through and gnaw on as I watched adolescent TV.

**My** jumper.

I darted numerous looks of confusion towards my bedroom, wondering when and how my lazing jumper had been snagged right out from under my nose. "What the hell are you doing with _my_ jumper?" I asked, creeped the fuck out at this point.

"It was mine first," Puck solemnly replied, staring at me through a squint, as though waiting for something to trigger off in my mind.

But the only thing that triggered was my growing capacity for feeling legitimately disturbed by Puck's worrying behavior.

"Nooo, I had that when I was like seventeen," I spoke slow and careful, like I was attempting to talk down a dog that I knew wanted to take a chunk from my arm. "We hadn't even met back then. So, what is this all about?"

"We might not have met, but I knew who you were. How'd you get the jumper?" he pressed me for an answer. "Do you even remember?"

"Puck, you're... you're really starting to creep me out," I told him, every hair at the back of my neck erecting as a cold shudder swept through the rest of my body.

"When I was seventeen, I… I broke into your parent's place."

I frowned. "...what?"

"I didn't get very far, before security spotted me, and whilst rushing to get out, _this_," he pinched desperately at the baggy arm of the jumper, "fell from around my waist. When we became friends and I started coming here a little more often, I saw you wearing it a lot. I knew you'd found it and kept it."

I shrieked out a perplexed, "what the fuck are you talking about?"

He gave a wane chuckle and sat back down again, almost defeated. "I'm… I'm your brother," he announced, low and heavy.

It was now my turn to chuckle, and not because I was finding this shit anything even close to funny, but because: "Puck, you're fucking insane!"

"I was angry," he added, like I'd said nothing at all, "because me and my mom were struggling, whilst Miguel gave you, and Rachel - who isn't even his kid - everything. I was going to torch the place that day, but security, they scared me away."

"Alright." I folded my arms cynically. "If this is all true, why didn't you say anything before?"

"_Because_ I knew I'd get all of this, and I didn't have to explain why I stole money from Miguel before, did I?"

I studied his expression, studied his body language for kinks in his demeanor. Not one made itself apparent.

"B-But t-that night, in that club - you... you hit on me," I reminded him, desperately clinging to it as justification for why he was spouting complete and utter bullshit. We were the same age, born days apart, which would've meant that my father had also knocked some other bitch up around the time that I was conceived.

Puck briefly closed his eyes and sighed. "I-I wasn't actually gonna try to fuck you or anything that night."

"Ugh! God," I grimaced, disgusted by the very notion of it.

"I just wanted to try to get close, to get to know the sister that I'd read so much about," he admitted, shame written all over his face.

I ran my shaky palm down over my face, and let it stop at my mouth, a few trembling fingers lingering on my top lip as I contemplated the absolute foolery that was playing out. Where was Ashton Kutcher hiding?

"I swear I wasn't thinking about fucking you when I hit on you, Santana," he reiterated, willing me to believe him with pressing wide eyes.

"God! Do you have any idea how fucked up that is?" I shouted.

"**You don't know what it was like**!" Puck suddenly boomed, the little-boy-lost of three seconds ago gone.

My lips snapped shut, a mute gulp following.

"You think growing up without a father was easy?" he spat. "Knowing that I had a sister who knew nothing about me! Knowing that my dad was this wealthy asshole who didn't want anything to do with me because he didn't wanna upset you, Rachel, and your mom - it hurts!"

"I..."

"Do you know that I actually tried to get Miguel to spend time with me?" he said, shaking his head as if he thought that he was beyond pathetic. "I even tried to get him to go golfing with me, and I fucking _hate_ golf! He refused everything I suggested, discarding me off as just some dirt-bag friend of his daughter's," he spat, so bitter that spittle fizzed at the corners of his mouth. "So when my mom told me how much her medical bills were, and that we wouldn't be able to pay them, I thought fuck it. _He_ can pay." Puck's voice was wavering in and out of strength, like tears were playing push-and-tug with his vocal chords. His bottom lip was quaking, along with his top, and I watched him repeatedly fold them in on each other to conceal the intensity of his apparent anguish.

"Does he... does he know who you are?" I tentatively asked.

Puck took a moment to compose himself and blink away the glisten that was expanding on the surface of his eyes, eventually answering, "he doesn't know what I look like, but he knows I'm out there somewhere. But it doesn't fucking matter, Santana. My mom **told** him that she was pregnant, and that she was having me regardless of whether she had his support or not. That's when he cut us off. The man doesn't give a shit!"

Never mind Puck; I needed to take a moment to compose _myself_…

The result of it was: "is your surname the same as your mom's? If it is, then surely he has to know who you are."

Puck shook his head. "I took my step-father, Keith's, last name when I was five."

I'd seen it a million times - families discovering their father's side family, and now _I_ was part of that club? I didn't know Puck's mom. For all I knew, she could've just said that my dad was Puck's father because he's got money. She could've been a delusional crackpot for all I knew about her, which was nothing at all. For that very reason I wanted a paternity test done, even if it meant that I had to appear on the Maury Povich show to get it.

I shrugged wearily, grumbling, "what the fuck am I supposed to do with all of this Puck?"

He shrugged also. "Just, now you know."

"I'm gonna get a paternity test done," I quietly muttered after a while.

Puck's eyes snapped up to mine, and his face twisted with hurt that made his forehead look like the moon's surface. "What, you think I'm fucking making this up? Dude, fuck you!"

I let out a short startled squeal and shielded my face as the glass on the counter suddenly flew out and exploded in fine crystal shards against the wall. I hadn't even seen Puck's hand bat it, but by the way that he stood up, snatched his shirt from the floor, and hurricaned out beyond my front door, I knew that that was exactly what had happened.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do with all that Puck had told me. I couldn't confide in Rachel, my mom, or dad, but that was nothing new. And how the hell was I supposed to retrieve my father's DNA for the paternity test without alerting him to the situation, besides sneaking up into his room to pick a couple of hairs from his comb? This wasn't a damn episode of _CSI_.

Fuck, what if Puck really was my brother?

* * *

The next morning I woke up feeling more spent than I had when I'd gone to sleep the night before. But two whole bottles of wine before bed will do that to you, I suppose.

My waking up ritual was always the same, unless I'd spent the night at some slut's place: check my cell phone, brush my teeth whilst showering, and get dressed in either regular clothes or clothes for lounging around in.

Despite the fuckery that had gone down with Puck yesterday, I was going to try to make sure that the morning followed normal custom.

Sometimes all a person has is routine.

With a stretch and a small yawn, I leaned over and reached out to the bedside cabinet to grab my phone. Flicking a thumb at the slider built into its side, the screen gradually came alive.

I had one message.

It had been sent at 6.45am, and was from Miss Brittany, simply reading: _Tell me your address_.

I lay there questioning the request for a good while; the bright glare from the sun seeping in through the curtains changed position many times.

But then I considered the fact that if I revealed my address to her and she actually showed up, she would be stepping into _my_ home. She didn't know where the kitchen hand rolls or the knife and forks were kept. If she needed the toilet, she'd need me to tell her where it was. She'd be out of her element here. That had to increase my chances of maybe scoring the upper hand if I needed to, right? I also hadn't forgotten about the reward she'd spoken of should I start to behave myself more often – maybe it would be sexual. I could only hope.

Then there was the fact that I felt an intense need to feed the fascination that I had with her.

In the end I was quite content to press out what was perhaps an uncharacteristically compliant, _15 Howercrop __Street_, and send it off.

I spent the next few minutes feeling some guilt over the memory of telling Puck that he was always around, even when he wasn't wanted, before my phone hummed three times and snapped me out of my trance.

_If the place is messy, __y__ou have fifteen minutes__ to clean up before I get there__._

Shit! She was coming here.

Now.

Like a complete maniac, I flung my duvet to the side, and clambered into the bathroom to freshen up.

It was the fastest shower I'd ever taken. I'd even banged the side of my head against the wall tile in my haste to scrub under my armpit, and ended up muttering a profane, "fuck off!" to the four condensated walls.

"Just try to do what she says, and she'll fuck the dust off of your pussy... maybe," I repeated to myself, as I walked from room to room.

I wanted to have sex with her to the point that it was slightly embarrassing. I wanted to run my hands over skin that I imagined to be creamy and silk-soft. I wanted to smell her arousal, and taste it. I wanted to see her eyes roll back in her head. I wanted to see her lose all control as she shuddered beneath my fingers and tongue, a cacophony of wild groans pouring out of her.

I hungered for all of that.

Suddenly the doorbell gonged.

I ran a hand through my hair and made for the front door, unlocking and unlatching it without bothering to check the security monitor in my lounge to see who was outside.

I knew that it was her because it was fifteen minutes, to the second, since she'd sent me that last text message.

As soon as I pulled open the door, Miss Brittany clicked her shiny red heels straight in past me without a word.

She looked simply gorgeous. Her deep blue irises popped for the dark eyeliner and mascara decorating them, and her hair was loose and wavy with a distinct side parting. Khaki-coloured skinny jeans ran the length of her legs, and a white sleeveless blouse, which was buttoned up to her sternum, hung fashionably around her slender torso.

Don't even get me started on the lust-red lipstick coating those taught lips.

After locking and latching the door, I turned around, noting the black bag swaying from her pale fingers for the first time.

I pressed my back into the door, and nodded at the bag. "What's in there?" I asked.

"Get me a chair and you'll find out," she retorted, not missing a beat.

I nodded towards the couch. "There are seats over there."

"Get me a standalone, smart-ass."

Maybe the bag contained some of her work clothes.

Maybe she was going to slip into them and spank me, or something.

The notion ignited fast spreading excitement within me, and before I knew it, I was dragging the wooden chair which usually sat at my dining table out to the center of the living area.

All four legs of it clinked against the floor and rocked from side to side a little as I released the backrest.

In silence, Miss Brittany reached past me and pulled the chair back a tad, pushing it over to the right until it was to her liking. "Sit down," she instructed, her voice betraying the same thing as her face, which amounted to a whole lot of absolutely nothing.

I stared at her for quite some time, or at least it felt like it.

Stood tall behind the varnished wooden chair, she arched an expectant eyebrow.

"You have exquisite eyes," I let slip out a little airily, completely and utterly dwelling in the pristine nature of their majestic blueness.

As if to exhibit them she blinked, and then said, "you think flattery will get you somewhere with me?"

I smirked somewhat, shrugging one shoulder. "Maybe. Who doesn't like a bit of flattery?"

She racked her nails at the chair's dark wood. "Sit down."

"...Ok," I cautiously agreed, "but if you do anything to me from behind, just know that I've told all those close to me about you. You're the first person the cops'll be questioning," I said, only _half_ joking. My heart was actually jack-hammering in my chest, and my palms seemed to be secreting enough moisture to water crops that went on for miles.

I sat down in the chair with a slow wariness.

Miss Brittany hummed a short chuckle, but offered no comment.

I'd never wanted to know what another was thinking so badly in my entire life.

I listened to her bag hit the floor behind me, and suddenly felt the fingertips of both her hands settle at the crest of my hairline, before she gently began combing them back through my silk black mane. She repeated this motion several times, seemingly working towards shoveling all of my hair back off of my shoulders, all whilst thick silence cocooned us.

It was actually a really sensual sensation, having her touch me like she was – her slow movements and her hush breathing the only things that could be heard.

I wanted to ask her, so badly, about the little girl I'd watched her arrive home to the other night. I wanted to ask her why she was here. I wanted to know why she thought that Jesus never truly existed. I wanted to ask, ask, ask, because each answer would give me parts of her to further analyze. But somehow, I felt that talking would pique her disapproval, rendering me silent in my own home.

In that moment I got it. I got why she had chosen to come here. She was showing me the extent of her power, that she could step foot into the place I owned and still run things.

"You have clean hair," she commented evenly, but I could feel that it was a quality she approved of.

Still facing forward, I let a smirk rise into the corner of my mouth.

As if now bored with the inspection, her fingers suddenly left my scalp, and I heard her shifting behind me.

Throwing a cautious frown back over my shoulder, I caught Miss Brittany crouching down over her bag. "Face forward," she said, though she didn't look at me at all.

Much reluctance coiled in my neck muscles, resulting in my gaze further lingering on her as she took what looked like a hairdresser's tool roll - which was made of a shiny grey mackintosh-type material - out of the rustling black bag. She unclipped it and rolled it out across the floor, revealing its numerous pockets; pockets which were housing various pairs of classic silver hairdresser-type scissors, and fine-tooth combs.

She was planning on cutting my hair**?**

Those complex blue eyes snapped up to mine. "Didn't I just tell you to turn around?"

"You're here to _cut my hair_?" I asked, incredulously.

Standing first, Miss Brittany pressed her flexed hand to the top of my head, and manually turned it so that I was once again facing forward. "I don't like the length that it's at. So you're going to go shorter," she told me. "And when I get bored of its colour, you're going to change that for me too," she added, with an easy certainty.

"I don't need or want a haircut," I let it be known, plagued by images of me sporting the same haircut as Bruce Lee, or something equally as dykey. My aesthetics were everything to me, second only to my wealth!

Her chuckle echoed around almost like a coven of witches; mocking in its very nature. "Sweetie, this isn't about what you want."

I threw power into twisting around in the chair, and glared up at Miss Brittany for a good few moments, later forcing, "how much are you planning to take off?" through gritted teeth. "This is - I don't even know if you can cut hair!" I complained.

She smirked down at me and, God dammit, I hated that sparkle behind her eyes, the one that I was growing too fond of.

"Now is as good a time as any to start working on deepening your non-existent capacity to trust then, isn't it? Now face forward," she instructed, forcefully twisting my head frontwards again, "and keep still."

Deepening my non-existent capacity to trust? Were my issues with trust really that transparent?

She was challenging me to completely surrender.

I didn't know if I could do it – or if I even wanted to.

When I heard the repeated chopping of sharp scissor blades, I knew that Miss Brittany had a pair in her hand. The noise grew closer and closer to my head as she combed back the strands that had returned to dangling past my collarbone.

"Do you trust me?" she asked, almost with the consideration of a doctor asking a child to close their eyes, before a needle disappeared into their vein.

But not quite. There was something challenging about it.

Like fuck did I trust her, but this was me attempting to behave, and I suspected that telling her no wasn't going to earn me anything close to a reward. So I breathed out a ragged lungful and nodded slightly. "Yeah."

"Don't lie to me again. You suck at it."

Without warning, she commenced to snipping at my ends with rapid chops.

I didn't want to move in case the turbulence of it caused those more than capable scissors to miss and take off a clump that they weren't supposed to, so I simply sunk my teeth down into my bottom lip, and grimaced like she was inflicting real physical pain. Clusters of my hair floated to the floor, into my lap, and kissed past my shoulders. It seemed like a lot of hair.

I couldn't believe that I was allowing her to do this to me.

Was I insane?

Her snipping soon began to slow, and the pattern of the clipping sounds became more careful - more precise - as she circled me to get to different parts of my head. That in itself soothed me a little, but ultimately I knew that I wasn't going to be able to relax until I'd considered my reflection in a mirror and okayed that I still looked like a female.

"Finished," she finally announced after what felt like an eternity stacked upon an eternity. "Stand up and look at me."

Blowing out a shaky puff of air, I dusted off my shirt, stood up, and turned around. There was a black mirror already poised mid-air in Miss Brittany's one hand, showing me my reflection. Whilst I squinted into the shiny silver surface, at first afraid to consider her handiwork, she reached out and preened certain strands to her liking, as though I was a mannequin and she was simply fluffing my wig before putting me in the shop window.

Once satisfied, she declared, "perfect," and then crouched down to pack away each tool.

I stood there, refusing to believe that she'd done such a professional job. The body of my hair remained, but it now just neatly tickled past my shoulders, whereas before it would hang to my nipples. I thought that it was a little short for my tastes – I liked to whip my hair around whilst throwing my weight around - but it still looked really good. I mean, I'd been expecting to see Bruce Lee's haircut sitting on my scalp. She'd even taken care of a couple pesky split ends near the left side, and even though I couldn't see my reflection anymore, I felt compelled to lift a hand and tousle my new hair in the way that we all do when we feel sexy.

All packed away, Miss Brittany scooped up her black bag and rose to full vertical capacity.

With only the wooden chair between us, we simply stood peering at each other, before she positioned the side of her foot to one of the chair's back legs, and pushed it off to the side. She reached out her free hand and sensuously let it slither around the back of my neck, its soft warmth making my eyes flurry between various states of open and closed.

Our faces were drawn so close that her breath hovered about my top lip, and the tips of our noses repeatedly kissed past one another. Hers was slightly cold, but the feel of it was nice.

Then she quietly dropped, "kiss me," between us.

My eyes were already closed when I leapt up hungrily for her lips, but they instantly sprung open again to Miss Brittany's filthy smirk, as the long and pale fingers that had quickly tangled in the hair at the base of my neck jerked my head backwards.

Something warm and wet and ridiculously soft then drew up the flesh of my arched caramel neck, and my eyes rolled back in my head like broken reels in a slot machine. "Holy f-f-fu -"

Miss Brittany's lips suddenly swept mine up into soft yet aggressive bliss, the last two letters of my intended profanity falling into her mouth and dissolving between our swirling tongues.

She would go on to trap my lips, one at a time, between hers, sucking on them and drawing them out away from my face, only to let them snap back to normal elasticity a few seconds later, and her tongue would roll so fucking sensually around mine. The hand that fisted the hair at the back of my head would flatten out and glide down my back to grab at my ass, only to glide up into my hair again, her fingernails scraping at my scalp.

Our kissing felt like a reward, like she was rewarding my compliance. I definitely preferred this to being punished. She was insanely skilled with her mouth.

When she broke away my eyes remained closed, but my lips drew forward, following after hers, following after the most satisfying kiss that I'd ever received.

The noise of the front door opening and closing is what eventually stirred me, and once I'd lifted my drooping eyelids, Miss Brittany and her black bag were gone…

* * *

When I stepped outside, I saw that the last hour's frenzied winds had swept through the city like an open refrigerator; everything slick with a thin blanket of frost, but alight and magnificent nevertheless.

The drastic change of whether meant that I would have to drive at a slower, more cautious, pace. But I was down with that. I didn't care how long it took me to arrive at Ben's place, as long as I got there. Plus the cold meant that I could wrap up to the point that nobody would recognize me.

He'd called me up say two hours ago to invite me around to his place, so that we could go over his findings on the address that I'd given him to look into. Miss Brittany's address. Apparently he had a real name for me, past occupations, and hospital records. "It's definitely interesting," he'd told me over the phone. "I've assembled the information like a jigsaw puzzle."

I was so excited that I was ready to have the man's kids.

The slow drive to Ben's place took me about twenty minutes all in all.

A short woman answered the cathedral-like front door with a warm smile. "Good afternoon Miss Lopez," she greeted me.

I ran my eyes down over her attire, which was your classic maid's uniform. "Afternoon," I replied, smiling back.

"I'll just lead you through," she said, allowing me inside before backing me to lock the door.

Whilst I waited I took my gaze all around. Sculptures of winged gargoyles posed menacingly at the bottom of the never-ending staircase, and thin carpet ran the floors instead of unimaginative marble or laminate. This was perhaps the second time that I'd ever been inside of Ben's place – or more appropriately, Ben's castle – since discovering his services three years ago. A lot had changed since my last visit.

The maid smiled as she brushed past, beckoning her hand for me to follow. "Just this way."

She led me through to a vast room, with a frescoed ceiling that might as well have been the sky, before receiving a nod of dismissal from Ben, who was lying down by the crackle of the open fireplace on his side, three neat piles of paper surrounding him.

He offered up a hand and gave me an inviting wave to come over.

As fast as my feet would follow instruction, I raced towards him, weaving between the luxurious sofa and coffee table.

Ben tapped the carpet beside him. "Here, sit. Make yourself comfortable." He assisted his suggestion by reaching behind and handing me a large cushion. "By the way, your hair looks nice."

"Thanks." I grabbed the cushion and stuffed it beneath my butt, removing my sunglasses and hanging them in the neck of my zip-up hoody once comfortable. "So what did you find out?" I eagerly shot at him.

"Umm, honey?" he suddenly called, elongating his neck out.

I followed his line of vision, and spotted his wife sat over in the corner, half of her pale face cast in the lamp's light. She looked up from her book.

"Yes?" she answered.

As though suddenly uncomfortable, Ben took his fingers up to the back of his neck and scratched the exposed flesh just above his crisp white collar. "I'm about to discuss business with my client. Do you think you could maybe...?"

Before he finished his sentence, she stood up and swiftly began crossing the room for the exit, as if his request was a familiar custom that she'd momentarily forgotten. She gave me a toothy smile as she breezed past. She looked scraped together as usual, her lips too red; the color smudged on her teeth. I'd briefly met her two times before and… well at least you could say that she was consistent with her poorly-put-together-appearance.

"Sorry about that," Ben apologized, running his fingers up and down his black tie absently as he silently read from one of the sheets of paper that was closest to him on the floor.

"It's cool," I quickly shrugged it off. "Back to Miss Brittany; what do you have for me?"

He looked up into my eyes, factually declaring, "her real name's Brittany Susan Pierce. Never married; she was born a Pierce. She's the sole homeowner of the address that you gave me."

"Pierce," I muttered to myself, trying it out on my tongue.

Brittany Pierce. It sat well with her, stern like I knew that she could be.

"However, she isn't the sole occupant of the house. One seven-year-old Molly Pierce also resides there."

"The little girl I told you about! – she must be Molly. What, is she like Brittany's little sister?" I asked. That now seemed like the logical conclusion to jump to. I mean, Molly had Brittany's surname. If she was Brittany's daughter, then why wouldn't she have her father's name?

Ben held up a halting finger. "I'll get to that, Santana, but first let me go over something else with you." He reached over and quickly thumbed through the middle stack of papers, stopping to pull out one sheet when he found what he was looking for. Lifting the piece of paper before his eyes, he said, "she obtained various qualifications in hair when she was nineteen – she's thirty now, by the way – and worked at _Style&Stush_ for quite a few years. But then she went on to work as a drop-in hair stylist for Mrs. Fabray at the Fabray residence in 2005."

The Fabray's.

So _that_ was how Quinn knew of Brittany. She'd worked on her mother's hair.

"Go on," I encouraged, the fire from the fireplace flickering in the periphery of my vision as I awed at Ben's findings.

He held up his finger again, and quickly reached for the third pile of papers. They were tagged with a small sticky note which read, 'Hospital records.' He drew back to his original position once he had what he wanted. "Now apart from the usual bumps and bruises that a lot of kids and teens suffer, she reported to Ashloft Accident and Emergency on May 5th 2005. According to this," he shook the sheet of paper, "she was experiencing some vaginal bleeding and was suffering various tears and lacerations to her vaginal walls – as well as some pretty horrific bruising. When asked what had happened, she explained to them that she had been raped." Out of courtesy, Ben stopped reading at that point and surveyed my expression, giving me time to take on the grim information.

I blinked profusely through a deep frown, and then passed my palm down over my face in the hopes that it would reset my emotions.

"Are you ok for me to continue?" asked Ben.

I gulped, still frowning. "Sure – wait, did she report it to the police?" I quickly asked.

"Not that I can find," he replied. He returned his eyes to the letters typed to the sheet of paper. "Three weeks following her visit to A&E, she visited her doctor and was tested for pregnancy. The results came back positive."

"So Molly is her daughter. She was a rape baby," I solemnly pondered aloud.

"The dates match up to support that, yes. But that's not to say that Molly wasn't conceived days before the rape occurred. But if there were two men involved, the first being the rapist and the second being a boyfriend of some sort, it would be hard to pinpoint who the father was without a paternity test. There's nobody's name on the birth certificate but Brittany's."

If Molly had indeed been conceived out of rape, why hadn't Brittany gotten an abortion, or reported the incident to the police? Maybe she didn't believe in abortions, but that's still lame. If that little blonde girl was here as a result of sexual assault, then that meant that Brittany had given birth to Molly _knowing_ how she came about. If it was true, then Brittany had been looking her rape in the face for the past seven years.

Finally finished with his little presentation, Ben laid the papers to the floor.

"Why didn't she go to the police?" I racked my brains.

"Well… I have my own theory on that," Ben hesitantly offered.

"What is it? What's your theory?"

"Remember when you got me to look into the Fabray's so that you would be equipped for your dinner with Quinn?"

I nodded, still a little unsure. "…uh-huh."

"I uncovered that there was that rape case surrounding Mr. Fabray, remember?"

The implication pelted my small frame full-force, like a heavy boot coming down on the back of an ant. I felt my entire face fall slack, my body freezing up to the point that I didn't know whether or not I was still breathing.

"The dates, the time-frame for when she suffered the rape and started to work for the Fabray's – it all adds up," Ben added, watching under his eyelids for my reaction.

I began to go over the dinner that I'd suffered in Quinn's company with a fine-tooth comb. When I had probed her about what she knew about Brittany, she'd gotten awkward, quickly scurrying from the restaurant like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was coming after her.

What did she know?

I had to find out!

If Ben's theory was true, then Quinn had a seven-year-old little sister.

"Ok, well err, thanks Ben. I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna go now. I'll send payment, along with your other payment, in the mail ok?"

He extended his hand out across and touched my arm, concerned. "Santana, are you sure you're ok?"

I didn't know the answer to that. I didn't know why I was feeling Brittany's trauma so deeply. It was insane.

Nevertheless I performed a nod, even if it was a little stilted.

"Ok then. And by the way, she's either got her cell phone turned off twenty-four-seven, or she's found a way to block the signal that it gives out, because I haven't been able to locate it for the last three days."

I nodded again, not really that concerned with tracking Brittany at this point.

I needed to go home and think.

I spent the drive home mulling all sorts of stuff over, like the first night that I met Brittany. The way that I approached her, like the only thing that she was good for was her body – I felt bad about it. I don't know; she'd probably been really insulted by that.

When I arrived home I headed straight for my bedroom and flicked on the television, letting it play out whilst I stripped off. I left my clothes piled on the floor, and slipped into some loose-fitted pajama bottoms and a loose T-shirt.

It was barely 8.30PM, but I was tired.

Once under the covers of my bed, I stared through the images flickering inside of the large plasma screen on the opposite wall.

What the hell was going on in the world? First Puck reveals that he's my long lost brother, and now the Brittany thing?

I didn't get her. There were no ifs ands or buts; she was raped, yet she was a dominatrix? She could have continued to work in the field of hair, but she had _chosen_ to do what she was doing now. Why would she deliberately put herself in situations that held within them the same sort of energy that the trauma of her rape had most likely possessed? In a sexual setting, she tied people up, whipped them, humiliated them, and forced them to do things against their will. Surely that sort of stuff had to spark flashbacks, or something. But she seemed to enjoy her work. That much was undeniable. It would sparkle in her eyes and pull the corner of her mouth up in smirk.

Was that normal?

I was curious, so curious that I grabbed my cell phone from the spare pillow next to mine, and scrolled through my contacts until my thumb was hovering over _Dr. Hal._

Dr. Hal was my mom's therapist. Rachel had tried to get me to go see him three months ago. She'd saved his number into my phone, and I hadn't deleted it because it hadn't been a priority. I was glad for that now.

Even if he was doing a shit job with my mom, perhaps he would be able to provide me with answers to my questions.

I touched the call icon and put my phone to my ear, letting it ring.

I was about to hang-up after maybe the twenty-fifth ring, but then the small sound of crackling turbulence filled my ear.

"Hello?"

"Errr, hi. This is Santana Lopez. My mother's one on your patients?"

"Oh," he replied. "Well, I'm sorry but I can't give you any information on your mother, if that's what you're calling for. Patient confidentiality and all that."

I had more interest in measuring the size of penises than I did in my mother's mental state. "No, I'm not calling for that. I just have a few general questions for you, for research purposes actually."

"Oh? Well in that case, I'll be happy to help. What did you want to know?" he asked.

I blew out a breath. "Rape victims. Is it normal for them to put themselves in situations that could trigger memories or feelings of the trauma that they suffered?"

He didn't say anything for a while, and then: "actually it's quite common. There's a little known principle in psychology called Repetition Compulsion, where the person who was traumatized engages in some sort of behavior associated with the trauma. Now of course, this is the exact opposite of what you'd expect a person to do, but certain psychologists are now saying that Repetition Compulsion is the victim's mind's way of attempting to 'master' the event, by reliving it and hoping it will – or forcing it to – turn out better. To add to that, some rape victims cannot achieve orgasm or get sexually excited at all, unless the sexual activity shadows the trauma that they've experienced in some way."

"Just…" I rubbed my fingertips across my forehead. "Wow."

"This, of course, is not a healthy impulse Santana. Rita Mae Brown said it best, 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.'"

"Well, err, thanks for the information," I said, my grasp on who Brittany was changing at a mile a minute.

"No problem Miss Lopez."

"Bye."

I touched the hang-up icon and flittered away the rest of the evening thinking about Brittany.

* * *

**Spoiler**: **This chapter will brush on the topic of rape.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Firstly, I would like to apologize for the wait. I had this chapter planned out, but it just didn't feel right when I wrote it, so I had to stray from my original plan. I initially wrote 10,000 words for this chapter too, but didn't feel like it all clicked together in one read. So I've decided to split it into two. **

**Once again, THANK YOU so much to all those who continue to support this story. I really appreciate it :D**

**To pleasegirldontyoudieonme, Yes Einstein did say that quote, but a few others have also said it too, Rita Mea Brown being one of them - as well as a few others. I suppose it's just whichever quoter you hear it from first. I like your theory on the repetition compulsion ; ) That would be one route to go down - to just say that britt does what she does to regain a sense of power, rather than having actual repetition compulsion. But that is the fun of a first person narrative. The readers only know what the narrator thinks they know lol ; )**

* * *

You can't trust anything.

Living this life I'd always known it, but now I _felt_ it.

It was like the ground beneath my very feet could in fact be a ruse, just like the crisp suits and friendly smiles of almost everybody that I knew.

We were all hiding – some more than others, of course.

Like Quinn Fabray.

She knew something that bubbled just beneath her coy holier-than-thou countenance, something that contrasted the warmth in her smiles.

She knew something. Perhaps that was why she clung to her crucifix so desperately.

I wanted to know the truth, and Ben had done all that he could. It was up to me to chase the facts…

"Can I get the address to the Fabray residence?" I asked, tap-dancing my nails to the neat desk.

With his back still to me, I almost began to think that my father was pretending I wasn't there, but then he turned around, smoke funneling from the flared nostrils of his arrow-straight nose. It was only when the thick gamboling clouds somewhat cleared, that I saw what he was taking to and from his lips. A cigar dangled classically between his index and forefinger, its tip blazing mid-air. "And what would you want with the Fabray residence address, Santana?"

It was just the kind of third-degree that I was looking for.

I shrugged a shoulder, feigning the casualness of a cat's indifference to the world bustling all around it. "If Fabray doesn't sign the deal when you proposition him, we all lose out right? I thought I'd try to get at Quinn again, make amends." Met with silence and vacant eyes, I added, "can't hurt right?"

He sat down in the plush leather swivel chair behind the desk, and tapped the tip of his cigar off into a black marble ashtray. "You think I'm going to trust you to tackle that again?"

"Here we go," I muttered under my breath, imagining those swirls of smoke assembling into two large hands and tightening around his neck.

"If you want to make yourself useful, you should go straight after Russell Fabray instead. I don't see how you could mess that up, unless you came right out with it, and told him that you were only expressing interest in him because you want him to sign with us."

At that, anger's boots stomped through me, and I felt my face morph into a hateful sneer. "What the _fuck_ are you smoking? You're supposed to be my dad, not my God damn pimp! – And, hello; the world knows I'm gay!"

In that moment, I honestly didn't know what Puck was so pissed about. He wasn't missing out on anything. At _all_.

My father scratched the side of his nose, his eyes contemplatively leering off to the side as if he hadn't heard me at all. "He's getting up there in age. You're a young beautiful Hispanic woman. Flirting with him will soon soften any hesitation that he may have towards eventually merging with us - especially if you stroke his ego into thinking that he's desirable enough to turn you onto men."

"Fuck you!" I grunted, blunt as a heavy object to the skull.

_There he is again ladies and gentleman; my father, Miguel C. Lopez_, I thought, bounding down the staircase whilst imagining that each stomp was one of my father's ribs broken, a tooth slapped from his mouth, his fucktard ways exorcized out of him.

My first impulse, of course, had been to call Ben and ask him to go through the info that he'd compiled for me on Quinn, so that I could get the Fabray residence address, but he hadn't been answering his phone all morning. It was strange. He always answered his phone.

In the end I decided to just go home...

As I rolled onto the driveway in my Mercedes, I vaguely saw that the mailbox built into my front door had something jammed into its mouth.

Quickly jumping out of the car, and securing its alarm system over my shoulder with a loud _beep_, I pounded the pavement that led to my doorstep, bending to inspect the foreign object with a curious frown. At first I attempted to pull on it so that it would fall into my palm, but it was too far inserted.

The shiny black cardboard making up its packaging just teared further with every futile tug.

I jabbed my key into the lock and let myself inside, closing in the door and immediately dropping into a crouch before the wedged box. It typically looked like a box that contained perfume, only now it was slightly battered, the once sharp corners now crumpled and pulled out of shape.

I secured a hand around its tail and gave one powerful jerk, falling back onto my ass with the momentum of it. With breathing that was now a little laboured, I slowly rotated the beaten-up box around in my hand.

_Vulva_, the fancy silver scrawl read, the lowercase A's flick extending around the entire box in intricate but pretty swirls. _Scent of a woman_, was also printed into the quality cardboard, just below a black and white cartoon-like – but still quite mature - image of vaginal lips.

I dug open the box's lid and lifted out a small smoked-glass vial. As I brought the bottle closer to my face, so that I could read the writing without having to go grab my glasses, a folded up piece of paper fell from it to the floor. The impact of it hitting the ground caused it to flutter open, and the neat blue-inked cursive that was scrawled to it brought a somewhat stunned chuckle to my lips.

_You love pussy so much? You're going to smell like pussy. Have the vial with you at all time_s.

I uncapped the fancy vial, lifted it to my nose, and drew the scent into my nostrils, letting the aroma of the slightly yellow lubricant-like liquid blossom in my nose for a few seconds, before closing my eyes and shuddering at its familiar sweet musky smell. There was a really sexy quality to it that instantly elevated my blood pressure, and caused my mind to swell with images of me slurping on the pink cove that sat between Brittany's thighs.

The same pink cove that I had been feeling slightly awkward about lusting after since discovering Brittany's trauma.

"Ugh!" I opened my eyes and rose to my feet, groaning, "you are _killing_ me Brittany."

She was, killing me I mean. Almost every cell in my brain seemed to conspire to make me think about her, whether I was brushing my teeth in the morning, or preparing something to eat in the evening, or masturbating at night. According to Dr. Hal, her behavior wasn't healthy, and whilst I wanted nothing more than for her to tie me up and pummel into me with either her fingers or intense thrusts of her hips, I couldn't help but feel that by going along with her games in pursuit of getting her into bed, I was perpetuating something that was detrimental to her.

I scoffed as I slumped down miserably into the couch. "Since when did you start to care?" I berated myself.

Because that's what it was; caring - a bad habit that I thought I'd given up a long time ago.

"Stop caring," I muttered scoldingly. "Just do what she says, and eventually she'll fuck you, and then you can move on with your life."

With a huff I pulled my phone out from my pocket, and dialled Ben's number in from where it had settled into my memory. I nestled the device between chin and cheek, reading the fine print on the back of the _Vulva_; _scent of a woman_ box whilst it rang...

"Hello?" he finally answered.

I put the perfume box down beside me and interrogated, "where the fuck have you been? I've been calling _all_ morning."

"Phone's been on the fritz," he simply replied.

I sighed. "Alright, well I need you to go through Quinn's folder for me and tell me the address to the Fabray residence please."

"I'm not currently – wait, did you just tag a please on the end of that request?"

I rolled my eyes. "Don't act so surprised. I _have_ manners."

Ben issued my protests a fluttering chuckle, like they weren't even worth the breath that I had used to speak them.

Once he'd composed himself, he said, "I'm not currently at home, so I have zero access to her folder, _but_ I remember the address."

"Great. I just hope she's home."

I was stood on the doorstep of the Fabray residence some forty-five minutes later. There were two cars parked on the driveway, neither of which looked that expensive. The actual building wasn't too extravagant either, sprawled over small land. It seemed older than the baby blanket, birth certificate, and hospital wristband that I kept boxed beneath my bed – older still than the yellowing pages of my abuela's diary.

Brushing away my judgements, I rapped my knuckles to the door and waited…

The front door soon opened at the hands of a man with quite large protruding lips – the butler, if his attire was any indication. His face was flustered, and the wind that punched at the windows swept through and ruffled his blonde fringe.

Regarding me with recognition, he put the hand that wasn't balancing a tray of tea to his hair, as if to stop a hat from flying off of his head.

"I'm here to see Quinn," I said.

"In what capacity?" he asked.

"Oh," I said, reaching into my purse to pull out a copy of the small but weighty book, "I just wanna return the bible she borrowed me. I tried to give it a read, and it's _really_ not my thing. I don't know how she's able to extract _any_ understanding from it." Throwing a quick glance past him into the house, I further added, "she said to wait at the bottom of the stairs for her, and she'd be with me when she could?"

It was believable. Quinn thought she was the Virgin Mary, and the world saw me as one of Satan's most active patrons. It would make sense that she'd be trying to save me with a sprinkling of holy water and a copy of the bible after meeting me for that disastrous dinner.

I hoped that the butler would buy it, because I didn't want Quinn to see me coming. I wanted to witness the truth, not a performance, and if something dark was going down in the Fabray household, then I wanted to catch it when it thought it was free to be itself.

To my relief, the butler stepped aside and allowed me to enter. I slinked over towards the staircase and leaned my elbow on the rail, feigning the wait with a content smile.

"Ok," he sighed, seeming stretched to the bone, "let me just go and deliver this tray of tea, and then I'll let Quinn know that you've arrived." He locked the front door back and brisked off to the left.

With trout-mouth out of sight, I quietly set off in search of Quinn.

I felt like a Hispanic female James Bond or something, as I stealthed around the ground floor, ducking in doorways and hiding behind walls at even the slightest of change in the air. It would be over if I ran into Russell Fabray or Mrs. Fabray; I knew that much. I also knew that I had to beat that butler to Quinn.

My feet skidded to a stop once I came to a vast arch in the cream hallway wall. It opened out to what looked to be a kitchen.

Somebody was in there. They were out of sight, but in there nevertheless. I could hear their delicate footsteps.

The footsteps soon fell quiet to the sound of sniffling, which then quickly escalated into shuddering choked back snorts.

"Ugh! God dammit!" a soft defeated voice whined out, followed by a prickling that resembled oil simmering on a stove.

It was her voice.

Quinn's voice.

I quickly snuck a peek around the frame of the archway and popped right back out again. Then when all seemed to settle down in my head, I gradually snuck my head around the archway's frame for a second time, this time keeping it there.

Quinn's posture held a slumped stance as, back to me, she waded around a rectangular island to get to the stove. I watched her scrape some diced onions up from the chopping board that she was stood over, and fling them into the waiting wok pan, the loud hiss covering up her distraught whimpers.

It was abrupt, the way that the fire beneath the wok suddenly flared. Quinn threw herself out of the flame's reach, offering a quick sniffle and a more insistent, "God _dammit_!"

She watched, powerlessly, as the wok that she'd accidentally knocked clanged to the granite tile and wobbled to a halt.

I bobbed my head back out and threw alert glances both left and right, hoping that nobody would come running to inquire about the commotion. But that hope shattered to dust when I heard movement nearing this way.

"Shit," I whispered, glancing all around for some sort of solution.

In the end I did the only thing that I could think to do.

I rushed into the kitchen.

At the sound of my panicked feet, Quinn jumped and span around, her red-rimmed eyes wide with the fright of a thousand ghosts, her cheeks streaked with tears.

Before either of us could react, a tall casually dressed middle-aged man breezed right in past me, causing my body to tense up with the awareness of all the different ways that this could go wrong.

Quinn immediately bent to pick up the wok pan, though the suddenness of it caused me to suspect that her true intention was to conceal the state of her puffy crimson face.

The blonde-haired man silently tossed curious glances between me, crouching Quinn, and the messy stodge of onions that marred the floor.

"Anyway yes, I'll definitely check that out. Sounds like a lot of fun," Quinn suddenly chirped, as she stood up and placed the wok back onto the stove - though her back remained to us long after the wok was secure.

At first I frowned, but I quickly grasped what she was doing and fell into character. "Ok, great. I'll, err, send you the details."

"Thanks. Dad, did you want something?" she asked, projecting her voice in as stable a manner as she could.

It was almost like I hadn't just caught her crying a river moments ago.

She was too good at it, _too_ good at throwing up a facade to not have had ample practice.

Seemingly buying that everything was perfectly normal, Mr. Fabray issued me a smile and then stilled a lingering look over at his daughter, who was busying her hands with the knobs on the stove, back still to us.

"Nothing in particular, no. Just came to see what all of the noise was about," he answered, drawing his smile back to me.

I pulled the straps to my purse further up onto my shoulder, and smiled back out of sheer discomfort.

"Yep, well I've got it all under control," Quinn insisted all too eagerly. "Nothing to worry about. You should go back to your office. The sooner those accounts are straightened out, the sooner you can get the sleep that you've been moaning about being deprived of."

Like Quinn wasn't even in the room, Mr. Fabray pointed his index finger out at me and then rubbed his chin with a curious squint. "Santana Lopez, right?"

I nodded. "That's me."

"Russell Fabray," he said, offering out his hand for me to shake.

Over by the stove, Quinn snapped her head back over her shoulder. Her eyes warily zeroed in on the open hand that her father was extending to me.

It seemed a strange reaction…

But whatever, I wasn't about to shake Mr. Fabray's hand for anybody. He was quite possibly a monster, the cause of Brittany's – and however many other women's – trauma, and if Molly was his child, then how many other women out there had been forced to womb his offspring?

He would remain convicted of those allegations in my mind until proven innocent.

"I'm sorry, but I don't really shake hands." I chuckled in the hopes of keeping everything light. "I'm a bit of an obsessive compulsive when it comes to germs. No offense intended, of course."

Mr. Fabray chuckled right along with me and lowered his hand. "Who would take offense to such a beautiful woman?"

"Dad," Quinn drawled warningly, "she's gay. Stop it!"

"I know sweetheart, I know," Mr. Fabray chuckled, completely undeterred in his leering at me.

He was actually a good-looking man for his age, and when he smiled he shared his daughter's bone structure, but his pear-shaped body kept him at an overly generous four as far as attractiveness went. I shuddered to think of his potbelly weighing down heavily into a struggling Brittany's stomach, whilst he pinned his forearm into her throat and pounded into her.

He was a dirty old man. That much was undeniable, but Quinn's reaction to him flirting with me and trying to shake my hand was strange. It seemed to extend beyond the whole, '_you're married to my mother, so behave_!' thing. She seemed almost… panicked?

Wanting to play off of that, I decided to take my douche-bag father's advice from this morning, and flirt with Mr. Fabray. "Well thank you Russell. Are you always this charming?"

"Dad, I really think that you should get back to the offi -"

"Only to those who deserve it," Mr. Fabray continued, his voice trampling all over his daughter's desperate attempt to interject. "I bet you break a lot of hearts, am I right?"

In the background I saw Quinn scoop a knife up from the chopping board. She subtly directed its gleaming tip in my direction, her eyes rippling with despair, almost as if to communicate that having it plunged through my chest would be a better fate than having her father set his sights on me.

"Not too many broken hearts actually," I answered him airily - "Uhm, Quinn?"

She silently placed the knife back down on the chopping board and rubbed her nose, sniffling, "what?"

Mr. Fabray glanced at his daughter, a frown etched into his forehead. "Honey, are you crying?"

"No!" Quinn hastened, brushing at the raw-red flesh beneath her eyes with the back of her hands. "Onions - they make me all puffy and weepy. You know that."

Somehow satisfied with his daughter's obvious lie, Mr. Fabray returned his salacious leer to me. "Well," he began, "it was nice to meet you in person Santana. I didn't even know that you and Quinn were friends; she never tells me these things anymore," he chuckled with an eye roll. "I think she's ashamed of me."

I fell into the giggles that he expected me to, adding, "kids, right?"

"I know. Anyway, I _really_ hope to see you around these parts again. I better get back to my office."

"Certainly," I nodded, as he left out through the archway with one last wink.

The second that his footsteps were no longer audible, Quinn tore around completely; head tilted forward, eyes narrowed murderously. "What the **fuck, **are you **doing** here?" she demanded with quiet menace.

Desperate Quinn seemed merely a thing of the past, swept away with her father's departure. But I'd _seen_ it, that urgency. Narrowing her eyes and grunting now wasn't going to un-mash the potato. She'd been desperate to get her father to go back to his office, desperate to get him away from me.

With it now being just the two of us, I dropped the burden of my fictional smile and asked, "when we were having dinner at Solaris, why'd you get so antsy when I asked you about Mistress Brittany Sheridan?"

I watched Quinn's head slowly lift out of its forward tilt, that menacing look falling from around her swollen eyes as they darted frantically around the room, seemingly looking for plausible answers. "You were being crude. It was deeply repelling so I, I left."

I narrowed skeptical eyes at her. "Sure about that?"

"You think you can just come into **my** home," she stressed, jabbing a forceful finger into her chest, "and interrogate me? Get out."

"I know Brittany worked here back in 2005, Quinn. I know that she used to style your mom's hair, and I also know about your father's -"

"Get out before I have you thrown out!" she quickly whispered, as if to clip a lid over a tub of poisonous gas before it floated up nostrils and put hearts to sleep.

But it was too late.

"I know about the recent case against you father. And I don't think it's just a coincidence that back in 2005, when Brittany was working for _you_ guys, she reported being -"

Pushing off of the stove's front, Quinn pounded the granite towards me and threw her hand around my upper arm, swiftly dragging me through an open door that was just to our right.

I shrugged her tight clasp off immediately, and she yanked on the inside door handle, enclosing us within the vast pantry with a loud slam.

I walked up on her so that our noses were sharing the same space, and spoke a heavy, "I _know_."

"No! No!" Quinn shook her head like that crazy woman who always lives at the end of the street, the one with all the cats. "You don't _know_ anything! So why don't you just go back to fucking everything and anything in a skirt, and get the _hell_ out of my life?" she quietly snarled. "_That_ case was **dropped**!"

"Only because she was paid off," I instantly countered, remembering the small bits of information that I'd read about it in Ben's folder on her.

Her mouth jutted open and then closed again, and her hand found its way back through her tousled blonde hair.

"I know that you know, Quinn, so drop the bullshit!"

A hard, mirthless, manic chuckle tore from her throat. "_Why_, because you're big bad Santana Lopez, and you're going to make me?" she mocked.

"_Because_ your father's a God damn monster who needs to be behind bars. _Because_ you can't continue to let him do this to innocent women! And because Brittany has a seven-year-old daughter, who might just be the product of **rape**!"

With the release of those three sentences I saw everything fall away, and before my very eyes Quinn became _real_, her frame crumpling in on itself.

"I…I know," she choked out choppily, bowing her head like she herself had committed the assaults.

Fresh tears sprung to her eyes. They quickly brimmed to full capacity, rolling to the end of her chin and splashing to the floor in small lakes. "I – it just – I-I wasn't – it… with Brittany, I-I saw him." Her eyes clenched to tight slits as she presumably relived the memory, wrinkle lines webbing from them like growing cracks in the earth. "I s-saw him," she gasped, "and I hid, l-like a coward, until it w-was over."

With those barely decipherable watery words she slumped back into the wall, shuddering as she slid down to the floor. "I just wanted to, I just wanted to p-protect… my family," she sobbed, repeatedly hiccuping as though she was headed into hyperventilation.

She **saw** him. She **saw** him assaulting Brittany. She saw him and she didn't do _anything_.

As a woman, I stood there staring at her in absolute disgust, before ripping open the pantry door, breezing out past the much-too-late butler, and leaving.

* * *

Droplets of sweat tickled down my glistening sternum, disappearing beyond the low neck of my red tank top as I pounded my feet to the treadmill's conveyor belt. My diaphragm grew and shrunk in quick burst, my mind racing with just as much haste.

Unemployed life was supposed to be boring, uneventful, yet there were multiple things that had occurred in the last few weeks that sought to keep me on a constant treadmill of drama and questions.

With everything that had happened, I was feeling overwhelmed to be honest, and usually there wasn't that added tension lingering in my loins, but the fact that Brittany was the only woman that I wanted to fuck right now, meant that I was being forced to cozy up to my vibrator at night, as well as my fingers. Hardly the same as a warm, soft, feminine body now was it?

I was frustrated, big time, and it was doing nothing to alleviate those feelings of being overwhelmed.

"One," I panted, "more," I wheezed, "lap!" I pushed, gripping the handrails and going as hard as I could.

It didn't help that Brittany hadn't contacted me for five days. The _Vulva_; _Scent of a woman_ perfume was the last I'd heard from her, and in some strange fucked up convoluted way, I was growing more riled, with every passing day, at the seeming abandonment. So riled that on day three, I began to formulate possible reasons for her absence; maybe her daughter was sick, or a parent had died, or maybe she was on holiday. It was sad and pathetic, especially since I'd told myself that I would stop caring. The woman had strung me up to a pipe in a public restroom and left me for Christ's sake.

But I cared, and I hated it.

I cared that Russell Fabray had gotten his perverted animal hands on her, and I cared about the impact that her trauma had possibly instigated within her life.

"Snap the fuck out of it! It happened seven years ago; she's probably fine," I tried to convince myself through ragged breaths.

Just below the sound of my feet hammering the moving belt, Deadmau5's '_I Remember_,' began to hum in my pocket.

I quickly sprawled my legs, and situated both feet on the ledges either side of the treadmill's conveyor belt, hitting the stop button seconds later.

"Fuck," I panted, trying to catch my breath, before reaching into my pocket for my buzzing phone.

Holding it before my face, I took in the name flashing on its screen. "Fuck," I muttered.

It was Brittany.

I almost dropped the device in my rush to press the pick-up icon and get it to my ear. "Uhh, hello?"

"Next time I send you perfume, I expect a thank you."

She had such a sexy voice; it was a little difficult to concentrate on anything else. "Errr -"

"Grab the perfume and put on a dress – none of that Gucci crap. Casual," she ordered.

I frowned. "Why?"

"Because I said so, that's why. I'll arrive at your place in thirty minutes. Make sure you're in your car waiting for me on your driveway, doors unlocked. If you're not exactly the way that I've just described when I arrive, you'll be punished. Severely."

A quite crackle and a click signaled that she'd hung up.

I stood there partially feeling like maybe I should've been more careful of what I'd wished for.

"But if there's room for punishment, maybe there's room for a reward," I smirked.

After a quick shower, I slipped into one of my most casual dresses. In fact, it didn't look much like a dress at all. Sleeveless and lacking any distinct shape, it more resembled a long T-shirt that stopped mid-thigh. The print on the front of it was a black and white picture of some sweaty rocker chick belting silent notes into a microphone.

I tousled my hair before my mirror, and considered how hot I looked in the new mascara that I'd purchased the other day. Brittany would want to gobble me up, even if she was restrained enough not to show it…

I twisted the knob on the radio built into the dashboard, letting the usual chart crap swirl around my car. Truthfully, it was just something for me to tap my foot to whilst I waited for Brittany. It was clear that I was still being hazed by her. She'd once told me that I hadn't earned an appointment or a date with her. I wondered, with an anxious curiosity, what she had planned today in order to have me further 'earn' those things.

The moment that I glanced at my wristwatch, there was a tug on the passenger door. Cold briefly swept in as Brittany sunk into the seat beside me, her perfume immediately flooring my sense of smell.

She closed the door in and cast complex blue eyes down over my outfit, presumably scanning it to see if it met her criteria.

She was so fucking beautiful, with hair that glistened like new coins - even if she was wearing a simple white V-neck T-shirt, and jeans that flared over modest brown boots.

I really wanted to know what she thought about me. Did she think that I was as hot as I thought she was?

I had to ask: "Do you like what you see?"

"It'll do," she replied, reaching her finger out to jab the radio's off button.

"I look good in this," I complimented myself, the way that she wouldn't.

"Outer beauty doesn't ask you to be clever, witty, kind, or thoughtful. It's something that is worn, and it eventually frays and falls to nothing," she said, bored. "Where's the perfume? I told you to have it with you at all times."

Despite her demand to know whether or not I had the vial of _Vulva_ with me, I found myself deep in frown beside her. What, she didn't think that I could be clever, witty, kind and thoughtful?

"I'm all of those things you just listed, _and_ beautiful," I argued, my nerves dipping into feelings of anger.

Brittany simply looked at me for a few seconds, nothing but infuriating indifference swirling in those blue pools. She then slipped her hand into her right jean's pocket, and once her pale fingers reappeared I was able to make out that something pink and frilly was scrunched in her palm - perhaps a hair scrunchie?

I knew that the hair scrunchie theory was _way_ off when Brittany let a pair of pink lace panties unfurl from her fingers before my eyes. "Pull them down over your head, and make sure that you can still see to drive," she calmly instructed, flinging them into my lap much the same way as I'd tossed that roll of fifties at her the night we met.

I bit my bottom lip as I stared down at the clearly worn panties; the scent wafting up from them made that of the _Vulva_ perfume seem like a poor assimilation.

"What are you waiting for?" Brittany asked. "Do I have to put them on for you?" she berated, with a condescendingly arched eyebrow.

"Not at all," I smirked, picking them up and slipping them down over my head and face.

They smelled as though she'd deliberately worn them for a couple of days; simply glorious. I didn't want her to take them away, because the thought of getting myself off with them draped over my face did _stupid_ things to my currently twitching sex.

I tightly gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and breathed out a content yet sexually frustrated breath.

"I said to make sure that you could still see to drive - weren't you just defending your big clever brain?" Brittany mocked.

Her tone was unnecessary, but she was right. I didn't want to end up in a pile-up. So I fiddled with the fabric that was covering my face, arranging it so that I could see out of both eyes clearly. "Uhm," I began, attempting to gather myself, "where are we supposed to be going?"

"You're going to drive to the Mission of Hope homeless shelter over on Twenty-Fifth Street."

"Uhh, excuse you?" I piped up, releasing the steering wheel whilst shaking my head in rejection of the idea. "I'm not going to a homeless shelter."

"Were you not just saying how kind and thoughtful you are? The people down at that shelter could use some kind and thoughtful, and you're going to be one of many to give it to them. Am I making myself clear?"

I knew what went down at those homeless shelters, and I wasn't about to start making cups of tea for druggies who were only homeless because they couldn't be bothered to get a job and turn their lives around.

"I'm nobody's slave, least of all for a bunch of druggies," I spat.

Brittany's lips twitched, threatening a smirk. "Actually you're _my_ slave, and you're gonna go help those homeless folks out, because you're embarrassingly desperate to get a lot closer to my pussy than just wearing my panties on your head. Now start up the car. Dinner at the shelter begins in an hour."

A stare-off ensued between us, before Brittany snatched my hand from my lap and secured it around the steering wheel with a forceful pointed squeeze. The aggression was such a fucking turn on, but no way in hell was I about to let her know that. I had to salvage _some_ of what was left of my shredded dignity – that was if I even had any left at this point.

"Ugh! Whatever, I'm **not** talking to any of them!" I grumbled, jabbing my thumb print to the glass scanner built into the dashboard. The engine rumbled as a result.

Brittany mussed her fringe and checked her teeth in the rear-view mirror. When finished, she directed her stare out of the windshield and said, "shut up and drive."

Silence hissed over the entire journey, like the beige leather interior of my car hid rattlesnake-filled coves...


	7. Chapter 7

**Hello again people : ) I did have most of this written a few days ago, but I've repeatedly been tweaking it. Still not 100% happy but if I keep reading it and tweaking it, then I'll lose my mojo, so I thought I'd better just post it so that I don't burn my inspiration out. Thanks for the reviews and all of the love! I really appreciate it.  
**

**To TheThreadWontCut, lmfao!**

**To Nayalove, i like the idea of them stealing some money and all running off together. I may just end the story like that lol.  
**

**To Pati1993, thanks for the love. I actually don't think i'm that good of a writer. Sometimes I write, or describe things, in a really convoluted way, and then i'll read another story, where the author has managed to describe the exact same thing in a simpler more precise way, without losing any impact. But thank you for the compliment :D**

* * *

I had no idea how long it had taken to get to Twenty-Fifth Street; I just knew that we were now there - and _boy_ did I know that I was no longer amongst the elite.

The street was sloped quite steeply, making the row of cars that were parked ahead, in the near distance, seem like they were falling off the face of the earth. Old newspaper pages, discarded candy wrappers, and polluted grit blew around the pavement. Crumbling houses, which were either boarded up or plagued with broken windows, lined either side of the road. The place, quite simply, was a dump, and the actual shelter itself followed such the trend.

"This place is uninhabitable," I murmured aloud, staring out of the windshield at the drab scenery.

"Not everybody's as fortunate as we are," Brittany said, looking across at me with eyes that were glazed with something I couldn't quite decipher. She blinked and then nodded at my head. "Take those off, and when you get into the kitchen, you're going to wash your hands before you touch anything."

I'd rather enjoyed having Brittany's musky honey scent surround me whilst driving. It was a scent that was just as enthralling as the woman behind it. There had been fleeting moments when I would forget that I was wearing her underwear on my head, and then I would breath, and the aroma would ghost over my taste buds and frolic in my nostrils. I didn't want that to end.

"You mean to tell me that I don't get to wear these inside?" I attempted to tease.

Brittany snapped her fingers one good loud time. "Panties! Take them off!"

I drew in one last inconspicuous whiff of the pink lace material, before dragging them off and making to stuff them into my bra through the sleeveless arm of my dress.

"Who said you were keeping them? Hand them over, and whilst you're at it, show me that you have the perfume with you."

With a petulant huff I put the panties in Brittany's lap, and then flattened my fingers to my right breast, the outline of the small vial that was living in my bra protruding with prominence.

"Good. Now when we get out of the car, stay close behind me."

"Somebody's probably gonna try to steal my God damn car," I grumbled, glancing around the street with disgust.

Brittany popped open the passenger door and stepped out. "Well then you'll just buy a new one. Quick! Out of the car." She hurried me along with another two snaps of those fingers.

I was actually going to do this.

I was actually going to set foot inside of a homeless shelter for the sake of some pussy.

At this point I couldn't really label my compliance as anything other than whipped.

Opening my own door and stepping out, I felt the urge to grab a handful of my dress and stifle the material over my nose and mouth. I was reluctant to breathe the air for fear that it would do damage to my insides. The place was a dump with a capital D.

I followed close behind Brittany's strides with my arms fastened across my chest in one final act of defiance.

She led me through the shelter's initial double doors and immediately turned a right corner, which took us into a wide hallway with stark cream walls. There was the chrome shimmer of an elevator door to the left. It was about the most glamorous thing in this dump, and even that had multiple scribblings of _'Enzo was heeree!'_ on it.

I puffed loose a sigh and dragged my feet, which caused Brittany to throw a somewhat stern look over her shoulder, before she led me past a wall that boasted paintings which looked like children had created them.

Her feet maneuvered the floors with undeniable certainty, leading me to believe that she knew perfectly well where she was going.

It caused me to question just how much time she'd spent in this place.

There was a man, dressed in white slacks and a navy blue T-shirt, just coming out of the door directly ahead. His greyish-green eyes flickered up at the piddling of mine and Brittany's footsteps.

"Oh, heeey Britt," he smiled, broad and familiar, as he stepped forward and encircled Brittany within his arms.

"Hey Taylon," she chirped, rubbing her hand up and down his back a few times, before parting out of the embrace. "You look hot in navy blue," she winked, sexy as anything.

I watched astutely, completely fascinated with seeing her interact with another person.

Taylon bowed his head at the compliment and grinned as if he thought he shouldn't, before waving it off to the side in partial blush. "Thanks."

"So how are things?"

"This place has been crazy! Linda's been sick, so I've…" Taylon's motor-mouth halted the moment that his eyes skated through the air and settled on me, his face morphing into a battle between frown and hesitant smile.

Brittany stepped aside a little bit, affording her friend a better view.

"Santana Lopez," he gushed, placing a startled hand to his chest. "How, how nice of you to stop by here." With a smile that looked as though it would begin to ache after a while, he slowly shook his head whilst he regarded my presence, blinking over and over again as if refusing to believe his own eyes.

Brittany suddenly slid her strong arm around my shoulders and cuddled me into her, tight and possessive. "Yeah, she's gonna be a sweetie and help out in the kitchen today," she told him, smiling almost mocking satisfaction at the side of my face.

It was difficult to react with her breath tickling my cheek and her scent flooring my senses.

Still pleasantly awed, Taylon jutted his thumb to his right and chirped, "well I'm just on my way to the kitchen area too. We can walk together."

I smiled, jaunting my fist through the air with mock enthusiasm.

As we sauntered down the hallways, I noticed a stocky black man crouching down to the floor, sweeping crumbs into a dustpan. There was something interesting about him; his face wore the story of a hard life.

"Oh, that's just Carl," Taylon suddenly piped up, having noticed me staring. "Chores are always on the agenda in a shelter this size. There's no such thing as too much help – which prompts me to ask you, Santana. What encouraged your decision to come here?"

"I lost a bet," I respond flatly.

His feet slowed, and all of the glee that had punctuated his features seconds ago gradually began to drain from his face.

"I'm kidding," I said, just as flatly.

Brittany threw me a look of stern admonishment, not caring to contradict the light and friendly image that Taylon appeared to hold of her. "It's not a joke if I'm not laughing," she said, her eyes narrowed in a cutting glare.

I felt impetuous now that Brittany and I had company, so I shrugged, "yeah, well I thought it was funny."

"It wasn't. I suggest you put a cap on that smart mouth of yours from here on out," she finalized.

Our exchange inspired an awkward chuckle from Taylon. In partial frown, he scratched the side of his head and resumed an even-paced gait ahead of us.

Brittany placed her hand to my lower back and pushed me along after him, her warden-like stride following closely behind mine. "Behave, or we're gonna have a _big_ problem," she told my ear.

The warm breathy threat caused me to clench my thighs.

"Hey Santana," Taylon began, slowing to fall into step beside me, "do you, uhh, mind if I get a photo of you helping out in the kitchen? The Daily Chronicle newspaper is writing an article about Mission of Hope..." He suddenly sighed. "I guess what I'm really asking is: can I take your photo and have them use it to go alongside the article? I think it'll really inspire others to come and help out."

Still seemingly displeased with my previous behavior, Brittany gave me cold eyes when I glanced at her, and in that moment I filed away this entire situation as one of the most peculiar situations that I had ever been in.

"Santana?" Taylon hesitantly asked, "would that be ok, or would you prefer that I -"

"Uhh yeah, sure," I agreed, if only to shut him up.

Besides, having my name in print for something noble had to be good for my public image, right?

The three of us soon reached the kitchen area. It was a rough-and-ready affair of off-white tiled walls, some cracked and others stained, and despite the food smelling ok, I couldn't believe that people actually ate out of this place. But whatever. At least I didn't have to.

"I'll just go get my camera," Taylon said, scurrying off through some brown tattered double doors, doors that appeared to lead out to a dining room.

Just like Brittany had instructed, I approached the small silver sink over in the corner and twisted the faucet on. The water gushed freezing cold over my fingers, but everything warmed up when a body pressed hard into my back.

Assertive pale hands reached across mine and hovered beneath the automatic hand wash dispenser.

My eyes momentarily fluttered at the feeling of having my ass cushioned snug in Brittany's warm hips. It was a perfect fit, and from the firm pressure that she was applying, I was certain that she would know how to fuck me - the way that I liked to be fucked - with a strap-on.

With the small glob of transparent hand wash that fell to her palm, she abruptly snatched my hands up into her own, sensuously lathering the sweet-smelling soap around every nook-and-cranny of caramel and vanilla flesh in sight.

She must have been _amazing_ in bed. She was ridiculously thorough and, in my experience, a thorough lover always made for an amazing one.

After she'd rinsed off our hands and turned the faucet off, Brittany stepped away from me and tugged two adjoining strips of kitchen roll from the reel sitting on the work counter.

Just then five other volunteers filtered inside, each one sporting an apron and blue latex gloves. A few of their gazes lingered in my direction as they breezed by to carry out their intended tasks, recognition swirling in their stares. But after a couple of seconds, they didn't really seem to care that they were in my presence, each one of them continuing to make trips to and from the dining room, blasé.

"Have you seen the amount of people queuing up out there?" one of them – a passing flustered-faced woman – called over at Brittany.

"I'm never surprised anymore," Brittany answered her, as she methodically rubbed the thin kitchen roll around her dripping hands, finger by finger.

A moment later she pressed her foot to a green bin's pedal, and tossed the used crumpled paper away, before tearing off two more sheets and handing them to me. "Be quick," she added.

I took them and dragged them around my hands, whilst watching Brittany breeze from one cupboard to the next. Her strides were so strong - even the small ones. I found myself really attracted to that. I'd never been attracted to anybody's walk before.

Was that even a thing?

She finally settled at a partially open draw. "Come here," she said firmly, beckoning me over without once affording me her gaze.

Just as Brittany had moments ago, I pressed my foot to the bin's pedal and dropped my damp ball of scrunched up kitchen roll into its dark mouth. My hands still tingled from where her soft fingertips had lathered them with soap, the both of them swaying at my sides with my gait towards her.

"You're going to take these knives and forks," she instructed, pointing into the draw, "and go lay the tables out there." She nodded towards the doors that I knew led out to the dining room.

I sighed.

From what I'd seen and heard, there were a lot of strays just beyond that door. This was the first time, since the Eden debacle, that I'd really been out in public without wearing some sort of disguise but, even so, I was in a homeless shelter right? It wasn't like the strays out there had the spare money to pick up celebrity gossip magazines, was it?

Brittany suddenly reached up, pulling open the door to the cupboard just above her head. She poked her hand around inside with a focused squint of those complex cat-like eyes, and when her elongated arm retreated, a blue net was dangling before my eyes. "Here," she said, whilst dusting down the counter of a few crumbs. "Make sure that all of your hair is tucked inside."

I deadpanned. "A hairnet? Are you kidding me?"

Brittany stopped dusting and looked me square in the face. "Put it on," she said with sinister calm.

Rolling my eyes, I grabbed the hairnet. "I cannot actually believe that I'm doing this," I grumbled, shaking the net out. "All I ever wanted was to book an appointment with you, or maybe go on a date or -"

"You aren't even disciplined enough to lay a few tables for the homeless," Brittany interrupted, unimpressed. "What makes you think that I'd go on a date with you?"

"Whatever," I spat, an irritated quickness to my tone. I was sick of her challenging my character. I could be all of the things that she'd listed in my car earlier - and then some!

"_Whatever_ is right, princess."

In one swift disgruntled motion, I tugged the hairnet down over my head, feeling like that big burly lunch lady; every school had one.

Brittany grabbed a fistful of my dress and jerked me even closer to her, tucking my loose hairs up into the net. "Smile," she encouraged, though I didn't feel that she was giving me a choice. "Those people out there have enough to distress over without worrying about your sour face too."

She pulled away and stood before me with a raised eyebrow and taught pink lips, waiting for my sullen face to crack.

I sighed, and then forced my facial muscles into an unnatural smile that fell about a nanosecond later.

"If you offend anyone, you'll be punished. Be kind and respectful at all times, or you and I are gonna have a problem."

She didn't even know those bums out there, but it seemed really important to her that I be kind to them. I truly didn't get it. What had those people ever done besides leach off of society?

Whatever though. I could be kind if it meant that Brittany would fuck me, or if it meant that I got to keep those pink lace panties.

Snatching the tray of cutlery from the draw, I headed for the brown double doors, pushing through them with quite a bit of difficulty due to how stiff they were.

Once in the dining room, my eyes darted past a long line of queuing strays towards an elderly woman. She was sat quietly on one of many chairs that leaned against the wall. Her vacant stare into thin air personified the stereotypical image that I'd always associated with the homeless.

There were men too – your typical matted-haired, rough-skinned, bloodshot-red-eyed hobos.

I walked past a group of them to get to the nearest table, totally expecting to be subjected to perverted comments and leers, but most were either just stood or sat there staring into space, like they were watching a screen that the rest of us weren't privy to.

That, in and of itself, made me want to flee.

Rounding the table, I collected one knife and fork at a time, and placed them per seat. Somebody had already laid out the spoons, thank God.

There was a Hispanic woman sat at the next table I came to, her arms cradling a small whimpering boy, her knee attempting to bounce comfort into him.

"Shh mijo, food will be here soon," she reassured the boy, who had his entire face hidden in her neck.

She glanced up at me with dreary yellowing eyes, and I instantly stopped staring, somehow feeling like an intruder.

"Uhh, sorry," I offered, bending my face to a placating smile as I moved around her to set the table.

The energy of hopelessness and despair was so thick, that images of me taking one of the knives from my tray and going at my wrist with it, flickered in my head.

Feeling extremely uncomfortable, I laid the other six tables as fast as I could, hoping to leave as fast as possible. This was no place for me.

I was getting ready to head back to the kitchen area, when I caught sight of a girl just pulling up a seat at the first table that I'd laid.

"Sugar?" I muttered to myself.

Surely that girl was not Sugar Motta.

Surely.

I redirected my step, my frown growing with every nearing stride.

"Sugar?" I tentatively asked, now stood over the girl.

When she looked up at me through sunken brown eyes and a face as drawn as curtains, I gasped, "what the fuck are you doing _here_?"

Sugar pulled the tattered brown shawl that lay over her shoulders around her thin body, and bowed her head in shame.

I hadn't meant to sound so harsh, but I was floored by the sight of her. The last time I saw Sugar Motta, she was dressed in an all-black Prada blazer and skirt at her parent's funeral. She had arrived in a limo and left in one.

Now she was waiting around in this dump for strangers to bring her rubbery lasagna?

Like a zombie, I lowered to the seat beside hers, noting that her once shiny hair was now almost stagnant with secreted scalp oils. "What happened?" I probed, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. "Last thing I heard, you moved to Spain."

"I couldn't run the business alone," she replied quietly, keeping her head bowed through a nasty cough. She rubbed her thin hand up and down her chest, coughing one more time before swallowing deeply. "After my parent's died, everything fell apart. Those who claimed to want to help screwed me over and…" She shrugged, attempting to lighten everything with a lackluster chuckle. "Here I am. Nobody gives a crap about you when your bank account's full of zeros."

Before I could respond, Sugar's stomach lurched and gurgled thunderously, snapping my lips shut.

Was she really _that_ hungry?

"Sugar, I-I don't know what to… say," I stammered out, lifting a hand to run it through my hair – only to feel the wiry material of the hairnet.

Sugar finally looked up into my face, though not with the confidence that I used to know her for. "What are you doing here anyway, Santana? Did you do something that landed you community service?"

Despite the situation, I couldn't help but crack a small smile at her dig. "I was never that bad."

"You totally were, and if I had the money I'd bet that you're still as bad."

I gestured over my shoulder at the brown double doors. "A friend, uhh, forced me to come help out here."

"I'm guessing she's a fifty on a hot scale of one to ten then," Sugar quipped, with all of the enthusiasm that she could muster under the circumstances.

"What scale? The scale ran away because of how intimidated it was when presented with her beauty."

Our back and forth reminded me of old times, except it wasn't like old times, because when I left, Sugar would remain here, in this dump.

It was depressing as hell - especially when I considered the fact that I could just as easily be in a similar situation if my parents were to die.

"I probably know your friend if she's a regular volunteer," said Sugar, the implied '_because I've been coming here for a while_,' ringing loud and clear between us.

I sighed heavily. "Her name's Brittany."

"Ohh," Sugar wearily drawled, patting her chest a couple of times, "you mean the quirky tall blonde with the unique blue eyes? She's such a sweetheart; you picked well, for a change."

For a moment, I sat there wondering whether or not I would ever get to, face-to-face, meet the Brittany who blew raspberries, or the Brittany who hugged herself against the cold, or the Brittany who would sit and talk to me about Molly and those fucked up Fabray's. I wanted to meet that person. Like, I really wanted to. It was crazy.

Nevertheless, I nodded and airily responded, "yeah, the quirky tall blonde with the unique blue eyes."

Sugar suddenly glanced towards the kitchen area. "Is the food nearly ready?" she asked, trying not to sound like she was starving, but her voice was thin and full of desperation's croak.

That was depressing as hell too.

I couldn't take it, so I opted for the easy getaway. "Uhh, I'll just go – I'll go hurry them along."

"Thanks Santana," Sugar tryingly chirped.

I pushed through those brown double doors to find Brittany and two others dishing portions of rice – amongst other hot foods – into large silver containers.

She now wore a hairnet, an apron, and gloves too.

"Leave the tray on the side," she instructed, somehow sensing my return.

With pleasure, I slung the tray in my hand onto the work counter, hoping never to come across it in life ever again.

"I don't know how often you come here and…" I gestured around frantically, "_do_ all of this, but how on _earth_ do you have the wherewithal to _keep_ coming _back_? It's like a God damn funeral out there." My voice flickered in and out of strength on that last word, but I fiercely bullied myself into holding it together.

I couldn't cry.

I was Santana Lopez; I didn't cry over some bullshit.

Brittany left the spoon standing up in the rice, and spoke something quiet to the two other volunteers, who then promptly left the room, but not before both issuing me sympathetic smiles.

I rolled my eyes away from Brittany's, chewing one side of my bottom lip as I peered into the bland pattern of the work counter, and willed the ache in my eyes away.

"Why are you upset Santana?"

I rolled my now blurring eyes back to hers and waved her off. "I'm not. I don't get upset – I get angry. I'm not upset."

Brittany folded her arms and blinked. "Don't lie to me. You suck at it, remember?"

I stared at her, not knowing how to take the change in her demeanor. I couldn't place it. She was still keeping me locked out of her emotions with that infuriating vacant expression, but her voice? Her voice was softer.

She covered the distance separating us, and fleetingly stroked her index finger down my nose, repeating, "why are you upset?"

Was it normal for such a chaste touch to send electrical currents tearing up and down your spine? So chaste, yet perhaps infinitely more intimate than the heated kisses we'd shared in the past.

I sighed, briefly rubbing my palm over my face. "I'm _not_ upset. I just saw someone I used to know out there." Still floored by the fact that Sugar was homeless, I shook my head to myself. "I can't believe she's _here_. Maybe I should've offered to let her crash at my place, or something, or -"

"Thoughtfulness beautifies you," Brittany cut in, regarding me with what I could only describe as vague flickers of warmth. "Now that we've proven that you're capable of thoughtfulness, I expect to see more of it in the future."

_Warmth beautifies you_, I thought, _and I'd love to see more of it from you in the future_.

With her looking at me like she was, that weightless feeling triggered, like unseen hands had lifted my entire body, and it sort of made me feel invincible. "You have the most..." My unsuccessful quest for a word that would do her eyes justice prompted a frustrated growl out of me. "Ugh! They're just..."

Her one eyebrow simply rose in question.

If I'd thought it to be allowed, I would've snatched her neck in both hands and kissed her lips purple and blue.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Taylon suddenly appeared. He smiled as he approached, waving a camera through the air as if he wanted to remind me about the photo I'd promised, without seeming pest-like.

Brittany stepped away from me and went back to the rice.

I stared after her like a longing puppy.

"Santana," Taylon pestered, "could you look this way a second please?"

I tore my gaze away from Brittany, and settled it on the camera that was poised before Taylon's one eye.

With a quick click and a flash, he lowered the camera and gushed, "thank you so much."

I nodded.

Five minutes later, the other volunteers began to dish dinner up and serve it.

I remained in the kitchen, washing the few dishes that Taylon had sheepishly asked me to, whilst Brittany dried them off with a towel beside me.

But for the sporadic interruptions from a few of the others, silence hissed dominantly around us, affording me the time to think.

Brittany had said that thoughtfulness beautified me, and then we'd had some sort of moment. I didn't know how to take it to be honest. I just knew that something - no matter how slight - had shifted between us; I could feel it.

"When you get done washing that cup, dry your hands, remove the hairnet, and go wait for me in your car."

"Uhh, O-Ok."

My feet retraced the straight-forward route to the exit and, before I knew it, I was sat in my Mercedes mulling over the day's events.

I sighed heavily.

I was going to need a glass of whiskey, or something, when I got home. That much was certain.

Shortly after, Brittany tugged open the passenger door and slipped in next to me, the entire car rocking slightly. "Drive to your place," she said.

"I can take you home if you tell me how to get there," I offered, hoping that the shift I'd sensed between us meant that she would let me in a little.

"Drive to your place," she reiterated, this time a little more firm.

_I guess not_, I thought, starting up the engine with a sigh.

The journey home seemed a lot shorter than the journey _to_ the Mission of Hope shelter.

I slowed my car on my drive and powered down the engine, looking to my right at Brittany, who had just slipped her phone back into her jean's pocket.

In her own time she returned my gaze, confidently holding it without as much as a blink.

We sat there like that for what felt like a really long time, my eyes squinting and growing with my efforts to figure out who I was looking at.

"I want to go on a date," I blurted.

"As long as I don't have you under any instruction at the time, you're free to go on as many dates as you want."

I rolled my eyes, sighing out, "I mean with you. I wanna go on a date with... you."

Brittany scoffed out a fluttering chuckle and shook her head to herself, though she didn't comment.

"What? You touched my nose and said that I was beautiful," I promptly reminded her. "I don't see what the problem is."

"Classic case of people hearing what they want to hear," was all she responded, and I suspected that she wasn't even talking to me, but to herself.

Fuck, why was she making this so difficult?

My lungs emptied with a deep sigh. "This isn't about me trying to fuck you," I quietly confessed, opting to add no more in the hopes that she would just get how I felt, _without_ me having to explain. "I'm sorry I was such a fucktard to you the night we met too. I wouldn't want anyone to talk to me like that, so... yeah, I'm sorry."

Brittany simply nodded, the lack of story in her eyes causing me to wonder whether or not my words were actually reaching her ears. The urge to get annoyed, and wave my hand before her face whilst yelling, '_Is anybody in there_?' was strong.

I ended up throwing just one finger up instead. "Just _one_ date, and if you hate it then you can whip the hell out of me, or force me to eat cow balls, or whatever." I shrugged.

"If I wanted to whip you, or force you to eat cow balls, I would, regardless," she let it be known, watching me with an intensity that I couldn't pick apart.

"But, that's not a straight up no then, right?"

"Not a yes either, smart-ass," she countered, unamused.

"Come on, I'll show you how thoughtful I can be in a date setting," I drawled, as though coaxing a child into a dentist's chair with the bribe of sweets later - not that a date with me was anything like a trip to the dentist.

Far from it.

Brittany would discover that if she just said yes.

Her lips parted, and hope fluttered broadly in my chest...

"You'll show me how thoughtful you can be in other ways."

I slowly leaned forward, my forehead thudding the steering wheel as I puffed out my cheeks with the release of a sigh. "You're stressing me out," I muttered.

The warm nearing hum of a car rippled over and through my senses just then. I leaned back and glanced up into the rear-view mirror, which was already holding all of Brittany's focus.

The small silver surface reflected an image of a never-ending black limousine parking up just behind.

I frowned.

"Are you expecting anybody?" Brittany asked, her eyes remaining fixed on the mirror through every word.

"No," I said, still deep in frown.

The only thing that I could think of was that Rachel had sent Larry to pick me up for something family related - but then she hadn't called or anything, so...

Suddenly the limousine's low hum ceased, its wheels rolling to a halt. The far back door popped open, and a pale female foot - heeled in a classic black stiletto - hit the pavement, before the other joined it.

"Shit," I murmured...

Once having slammed the limousine door closed, Quinn Fabray tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and peered anxiously at my front door.


End file.
